TRANSLATED BY
JOHN P. LACROIX.
NEW YORK:
NELSON & PHILLIPS.
Cincinnati: Hitchcock & Walden.
1873.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, by
NELSON & PHILLIPS.
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington.
WE, the representatives of the family of the late Dr. Adolf Wuttke, Professor of Theology at Halle on the Saale, have thankfully accepted the proposition of Professor JOHN P. LACROIX to translate into English the deceased author’s Christliche Sittenlehre (Wiegandt & Grieben, Berlin, 1864-5), and we gladly second the wish of the esteemed translator by expressly and formally authorizing him, on our part, to publish the work in the English language.
MRS. PROFESSOR WUITTKE,
DR. EDUARD RIEHM,
(as Guardian of the children).
HALLE, March 8, 1872.
IN my labor upon this translation I have aimed at the truest practical reproduction, sentence by sentence, of the thoughts of the author. This method I deliberately preferred, rather than incur the risk of impairing the clearness of thought by entirely recasting the forms of speech. In a few cases I have employed unusual compounds, rather than resort to paraphrases or to an undue multiplication of subordinate clauses. On the whole, I am persuaded that those who are best acquainted with the difficulties of the original will be most indulgent toward the style of the version. This first volume, although only the Introduction to the entire work, is yet a complete whole in itself, viz., a survey of the whole current of the ethical thought of humanity from the earliest dawn of scientific reflection down to the latest results in Christian theology.
The motives that led me to undertake the translation have
beep various. Esteemed teachers exhorted me thereto, as soon as notices
of the work began to appear. German scholars spoke to me enthusiastically
of its unparalleled excellence. My chief motive, however, has been a
compound of gratitude and hope,—gratitude to the devout thinker whose
work had been, to me, the medium of so much spiritual good,—and a hope
of helping others to the same good. For, in fact, no other human production
has lifted, for me, so many vails from shadowy places in Revelation
and Providence; none has worked so effectually in definitively directing.
my mind and heart toward that Light which stands, serene and ever-brightening,
over against the comfortless spectacle of the successive and rapid extinguishment
of every effort at social reform which does not kindle its torch at
the central Source of all light. And no labor
As to the specific merits of the work, I am happy to refer the reader to the considerate words of the distinguished theologian of Halle, Dr. Riehm, in the special preface which he has prepared for this translation. I could also, were it desirable, fill many pages with words of highest praise from the most respectable and the most diverse sources. And the praise is bestowed not only upon its scientific worth, but largely also upon the spirit of its author. All critics accord in testifying that we have to do here with a man singularly endowed with keenness of philosophic insight and with devoutness of Christian faith.
Whether,
however, there is need here in America—where there is so strong a proclivity
to run away after every glittering theological or social novelty, and
where there are so many evidences that the general consciousness both
of preachers and of people is not thoroughly enough grounded upon the
central truths of the Gospel—of a work such as this (a work which, in
so masterly a manner, brings the whole moral life into vital relation
to its only possible Source, and which sweeps away so thoroughly every
social or religious theory which does not stand the touch-stone of plain
Bible-truth), it is for others to judge. We have been led to augur
favorably, however, both from our own studies in the field and also
from the expressed views of many of our most progressive teachers of
ethics, viz., that there is a loud call for something more solidly philosophical
and more thoroughly evangelical than is afforded by our common text-books
on Moral Science; See Dr. Warren’s Introduction to Vol. II. See Evangelische Kirchenzeitung,
(Berlin), Sept. 4, 1861.
J. P. L.
Dr. Riehm, who has kindly furnished me this general preface, and to whom I am indebted for many valuable suggestions in regard to my undertaking, is one of the professors of theology at Halle, and also editor-in-chief of the Studien und Kritiken.—Tr.
THE author of the work which here appears in English, Dr. Carl Friedrich Adolf Wuttke, has won for himself a distinguished place in the evangelical Church and theology of Germany. A few items as to his life and activity, and as to the spirit and character of his endeavors, may serve to call attention to a work which is widely circulated and much read throughout Germany.
Born in Breslau, November
10, 1819, in humble life, the young Wuttke obtained his preparatory
education under circumstances of great difficulty and self-denial.
In 1840 he entered the University of 1reslau in view of studying theology,
but he found very little satisfaction in the theology that was there
taught. The superficial Rationalism which then prevailed in Breslau
violently repelled him, and drove him at once and forever to a position
of antagonism to this stand-point. As neither his religious nor his
scientific wants found satisfaction in his theological teachers, he
endeavored to satisfy the latter, at least, by turning his attention
primarily and chiefly to philosophy. To this end he possessed dialectic
talents of unusual excellence, and he received from the celebrated and,
then, fully mature Braniss fruitful inspiration. His academic career
he began in 1848, in Breslau, as Doctor and privat-docent of philosophy.
His preferred field was the Philosophy of Religion. This led him to
thorough studies in the history of reliions. A fruit of his studies
he has embodied in his “History of Heathenism in respect to religion,
knowledge, art,
The more he pursued his studies in the history and philosophy of religions,
so much the more fully and renewedly he became convinced that the highest
and the only soul-satisfying knowledge of the truth is to be found only
by merging one’s self into the Holy Scriptures and into the therein-witnessed
revelations of the living God; hence he felt himself more and more attracted
back to the field of theology. In 1853 he obtained the degree of Licentiate
in Theology, and changed his field of instruction from philosophy to
that of theology; having been called to Berlin, in November, 1854,
to an extraordinary professorship of theology, he found an enlarged
and appreciative sphere for the exercise of his gifts.—In virtue of his
firm and independent nature—partly inborn and partly developed in the
severe school of experience—he felt also a pressing need of a firmly-based
construction of his theological views, and of a clear, distinct, and
unambiguous expression of the same. This need was in part met by the
Lutheran form of doctrine. It is true, he saw very clearly the defects
and imperfections which a scientific construction and demonstration
of this doctrinal formula bring to light; taking into consideration,
however, its essential features, he found in it the purest and truest
didactic presentation of evangelical truth. As a German Protestant, Dr. Wuttke
had practically only two choices in his Church-relations, namely, between
the Lutheran Church and the Reformed or Calvinistic Church. The so-called
“United” Church of Prussia has little more than a legal existence,
the individual societies having mostly remained essentially Lutheran
or Reformed, as before the union.—TR.
In this sense and spirit he exercised
his office of theological teacher in Berlin. One can well imagine how
glad the late Dr. Hengstenberg was to have found in him so able a co-laborer,
and also that he became warmly and intimately attached to his younger
colleague. Dr. Wuttke, however, was free from the ultra-confessionalism of Hengstenberg;
he even favored the “Union.” See Neue evangelische Kirchenzeitung
of May 7, 1870.—Tr.
In the autumn of 1861 he accepted a call to an ordinary professorship of systematic theology in our university at Halle. Although, as the representative of a strictly churchly theology, he stood here somewhat isolated, still the positive evangelical tendency (a tendency based on faith in the revelations and redemptive acts of God as witnessed in the Scriptures) of the other members of the faculty (and among them the universally known and revered Dr. Tholuck) afforded a broad and firm basis for a richly productive official co-operation. Highly esteemed by his colleagues for his straight-forwardness, reliableness, punctuality, and conscientious fidelity in all his official duties, he exercised, here, his calling as teacher in a circle of hearers, at first relatively narrow, but which soon grew visibly larger, especially in the case of his lectures on Christian ethics; and he had the joy of seeing the seed, he had sown, spring up and bear fruit in many youthful hearts,—until on the 12th of April, 1870, after a brief sickness, it pleased the Lord whom he served to permit him, unexpectedly early, to pass from faith to sight.
Along-side of his more specific professional activity, Dr. Wuttke was always ready to serve the church by special
addresses, in ecclesiastical and other assemblies, on weighty questions
of the day. Quite a number of these addresses have been published in
Hengstenberg’s “Evangelical Church Journal.” To one of them, which
was delivered in 1858, at a church-diet at Hamburg, is due the preparation
of his widely-popular and excellent work, “The German Popular
For the judgment and appreciation of some portions of the work here presented to the public, it will not be out of place to observe that the author took a lively and active part also in the political life of the nation. As early as during the revolutionary storm of 1848 he defended for a while, as editor of a conservative journal in Königsberg, the cause of legal order and of the government. And during his activity among us,—though in other respects living in the greatest seclusion,—he frequently appeared publicly, in political meetings in Halle and in other towns of the province of Saxony, as the spokesman of the constitutional party; and once he took part also in the labors of the national diet, to which the confidence of his fellow-citizens had called him.
The work here given to the English-reading
public, Christian Ethics, which appeared in 1861-’62 in its first,
and in 1864-’65 in its second, revised and enlarged, edition, is Dr. Wuttke’s only considerable
theological work. He has here entered upon
a field, the cultivation of which, his special life-task as above indicated,
must have pressed upon him with very great urgency. Upon no other field
had the scientific treatment of the theology he represented, remained
to such a degree imperfect and unsatisfactory. Although Christian ethics,
after the precedent of Danaeus on the Calvinistic side, had been raised
by Calixtus to the dignity of an independent theological science, nevertheless
the prevalent one-sidedly dogmatic interest hindered and prevented its
thorough development. And when finally, since the last decade of the
last century, a more lively scientific interest was turned to the subject,
then, unfortunately, Christian ethics became involved in an almost slavish
dependence upon the philosophical systems of a Kant, a Fichte, a
Fries,
a Hegel, and a Herbart, as they successively rose and followed each
other. From this cramping pupilage, ethics was indeed emancipated by
the Reconstructor of the collective body of German theology,
That in the construction
of his ethical system, Dr. Wuttke did not allow the Lutheran symbols
to construe the Bible, but on the contrary measured them by the Bible,
and freely criticized them where found defective, we have both his own
reiterated avowal (as where, § 80, he declares it his purpose to write,
not on ethics of this or that Church, but a Christian Ethics; and where,
in his preface, p. 4, he declares the governing principles of his labors
to be “honest loyalty to the Gospel”); and also his actual contrasting
of the Lutheran and the Reformed ground-views (see § 37), and his ample
admission that the Lutheran view needs to be complemented.—Tr. I am indebted to Dr. P. Schaff for the following: “Dr. Riehm
is a liberal Unionist of the critical school of Hupfeld, his predecessor.”—Tr.
I doubt not, therefore, that this work will meet with a hearty welcome also in America and in England, and that too in theological circles which, while not sharing the special ecclesiastical views of the author, will yet not fail worthily to appreciate his conscientious fidelity to Scripture-truth and the scientific significancy of his labors; and I feel confident that the work will prove serviceable in the promotion of a healthy and practically-fruitful theological knowledge.
DR. EDUARD RIEHM,
Professor, in ordinary, of Theology at Halle.
HALLE, March 14th, 1872.
THE theology of the nineteenth
century has aimed at giving special prominence to the ethical phase
of Christianity; and yet, strangely enough, the scientific treatment
of Christian ethics has shown, as compared to the other branches of
theology, a far inferior productiveness, and in fact a degree of barrenness.
This phenomenon is not explainable from any precedent over-fruitfulness.
nor from any unquestioning satisfaction with any already-attained relatively-definitive
perfection of the science, nor from the imposing pre-eminence of any
exceptionally great author; on the contrary, every competent theologian
knows perfectly well that no other branch of theology is so far from
having reached any, even relatively, settled completeness and generally-accepted
form and contents, as precisely the science of ethics. Even the very
idea, contents, and boundaries of ethics, are as yet in many respects
so unsettled that the different presentations of the science have often
only very remote resemblances to each other;
What we attempt in
the present work is neither speculative ethics nor yet Biblical ethics
in the sense of a purely exegetico-historical science, but, in fact,
a system of theological ethics based on the substance and spirit of
the Bible, and constructed into a scientific form, not by the help of
a philosophy foreign to that spirit, but by the inner self-development
of the spirit itself. Whether we have properly comprehended this spirit,
and whether we have faithfully learned from the general
BERLIN, Dec. 31, 1860.
WITHIN a surprisingly brief period a new edition of this System of Ethics has become necessary.
To many critics of’ the work we feel ourselves thankfully indebted;
of others, however, we regret to have to say that, instead of scientific
earnestness, they have manifested only passionate hostility. It is true,
we have gone at our work with honesty and plainness of speech, and have
touched somewhat ungently upon certain sore places in the more recent
forms of theology; and the tone of ill-will in which the opposers have
indulged would seem to indicate that the right spot has been probed;
and we are in fact cheerfully ready to be subjected to the most searching
criticism. There is an immense difference, however, between actual confutation
and unworthy abuse. Some critics have charged this work with being
an “attentat” against the “inalienable” conquests
HALLE, August, 1864.
PAGE | |
INTRODUCTION. | |
I. THE IDEA OF ETHICS, AND THE POSITION OF THIS SCIENCE IN THE FIELD OF SCIENCE IN GENERAL |
13 |
§ 1. THE IDEA |
13 |
§ 2. PHILOSOPHICAL ETHICS |
16 |
§ 3. THEOLOGICAL ETHICS |
21 |
II. THE SCIENTIFIC TREATMENT OF ETHICS, § 4 | 27 |
III. THE HISTORY OF ETHICS AND OF THE MORAL CONSCIOUSNESS IN GENERAL, § 5 |
35 |
A. THE MORAL CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE ETHICS OF HEATHEN NATIONS, § 6 |
37 |
§ 7. THE UNHISTORICAL NATIONS; THE CHINESE |
43 |
§ 8. THE INDIANS |
47 |
§ 9. THE EGYPTIANS AND THE SEMITIC NATIONS |
54 |
§ 10. THE PERSIANS |
58 |
§ 11. THE GREEKS |
62 |
§ 12. SOCRATES |
69 |
§ 13. THE 0YNICS AND THE CY RENAICS |
72 |
§§ 14-15. PLATO |
75 |
§§ 16-21. ARISTOTLE |
92 |
§§ 22-25. THE EPICUREANS AND THE STOICS |
126 |
§ 26. THE SKEPTICS AND THE NEO-PLATONISTS; THE ROMANIS |
144 |
B. OLD TESTAMENT AND JEWISH ETHICS. |
|
§ 27. THE CANON OF THE OLD TESTAMENT |
151 |
§ 28. THE APOCRYPHAL BOOKS, THE TALMUD |
169 |
[ISLAMISM] |
171 |
C. CHRISTIAN ETHICS, § 29 |
173 |
180 | |
2. THE MIIDDLE AGES, § 32 |
199 |
§§ 33, 34. SCHOLASTICS AND CASUISTICS |
200 |
§ 35. TItE MYSTICS AND THE PROTO-REFORMERS |
223 |
3. THE EPOCH OF REFORM, § 36 |
233 |
§ 37. THE EVANGELICAL ETHICS OF THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES |
235 |
§§ 38, 39. ROMISH ETHICS |
255, 273 |
§ 40. PHILOSOPHICAL ETHICS BEFORE KANT |
217 |
§ 41. DEISTIC AND NATURALISTIC ETHICS |
301 |
§ 42. THE EVANGELICAL ETHICS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY |
324 |
§ 43. KANT |
32 |
§ 44. FICHTE |
338 |
§ 45. SCHELLING; JACOBI |
341 |
§ 46. HEGEL AND HIS SCHOOL |
345 |
§ 47. THE MOST RECENT PHILOSOPHY |
355 |
§ 48. THE EVANGELICAL ETHICS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY |
359 |
§ 49. ROMISH ETHICS |
375 |
ETHICS, as belonging to the sphere both of philosophy and of theology, is the science of the moral, and hence Christian ethics is the science of Christian morals. But the moral lies in the sphere of the freedom of rational creatures, as in contrast to mere nature-objects. Man, as a rational being, has the end of his life, not as one realizing itself in him spontaneously and with unconditional necessity, but, on the contrary, he has it primarily only ideally, in his rational consciousness, so that he cannot attain to it by a mere unconscious letting himself alone, but only by a personally and freely-willed life-activity; but also, for that very reason, he can fail of it by his own fault;— and the essence of this life-development of man, as relating to the realizing of his rational life-purpose, is the moral; that is, when normal, the morally-good, and when guiltily-perverted, the morally-evil.
So much merely preliminarily; the more complete demonstration
can be given only further on. The sphere of freedom is that of the moral;
whatever is moral is essentially free, and whatever is free is moral.
There is, indeed, an immorally-
In the Scriptures, the ethical phase
of Christian doctrine is designated as “the knowledge of God’s will
in all wisdom and spiritual understanding” (
The majority of theological moralists
present at once the definition of Christian ethics; but this more
restricted notion cannot be understood without the more comprehensive notion of
ethics in general. The declaration (Harless and others) that ethics
is the theoretical presentation of the Christianly-normal life-course,
or the development-history of man as redeemed by Christ, is both too
narrow and too broad at the same time: too narrow, inasmuch as ethics
must unquestionably speak also of the non-normal life-course, and that,
too, not merely incidentally and introductorily, but as of one of its
essential elements; and too broad, because, in fact, many things belong
to such a life-course which belong not to the sphere of the moral, but
to the objective workings of divine grace upon the moral subject. Such
a definition is rather that of the order of Christian salvation, which,
however, is not wholly embraced in the notion of the moral. It is true,
Christian ethics must take into consideration the workings of divine
grace, but only, however, as its presupposition; the becoming seized
upon by the influence of divine grace leads, indeed, to morality, but
lies not itself in the, moral sphere. According to Schleiermacher,
Christian ethics is “the presentation of communion with God as conditioned
by communion with Christ, the Redeemer, in so far as this communion
with God is the motive of all the actions of the Christian, or the description
of that manner of action which springs from the domination of the Christianly-determined
self-consciousness;” Christl. Sitte, pp. 32, 33.
As to the name applied to the science, the German expression “Sittenlehre,”
usual since the time of Mosheim, is ambiguous, being capable of being
understood as the doctrine of customs instead of the doctrine of the
moral. The term ethics is the most ancient, as dating from Aristotle
himself; ἦθος, radically related to ἔθος,
from the root ἔζω, “to set”
and “to sit,” signifies in Homer the seat, the dwelling-place, the home,
and hence, at Aristot., Eth. Nic., i, 13.
As a philosophical science, ethics forms a part of the philosophy of the spirit,—has as presuppositions speculative theology and psychology, and stands in the closest relation to the science of history as the objective, realization of the moral life. As standing within the science of spirit, it presents, as in contrast to knowledge, the active phase of the rational spirit-life, whereby man, as having come to rational self-consciousness, makes into reality that which exists in hirm primarily only as an idea,—makes his spiritually-rational nature as existing objectively to him into a nature freely-willed and posited by himself.
The position here assigned to philosophical ethics takes the definition of that science in its widest sense, and embraces also right and art. While the view which merges morality essentially into either right or art is very one-sided and a mistaking of the nature of the moral in general, it would not be less erroneous entirely to shut out the moral from these two spheres, and to place it simply along-side of them; the moral is rather, as the superior element, above them, and right and art have truth only in so far as they are special realization-forms of the moral; there is, in truth, no immoral right and no immoral beauty, although by sinful man the wrong is often regarded as right, and the un-beautiful as beautiful.
Schleiermacher, in his Philosophical Ethics,
gives a definition of philosophical ethics, based on the views of Fichte
and Schelling, which entirely differs from the usual one. In assuming
two chief sciences, that of nature and that of reason, whereof each
may be treated either empirically or speculatively, according as the
reality or the essence of the object is more directly taken into view,
he obtains four sciences in all. The empirical science of nature is
natural history; the speculative science of nature is
System der Ethik, edited by Schweizer, 1835, §§ 55, sqq., 60, 61, 87.
Hegel
conceives of ethics as one of the phases of the Philosophy of the Spirit,
and more specifically as the sphere of the objective spirit in contradistinction
to that of the subjective, which embraces anthropology, the phenomenology
of the spirit, and psychology. The spirit, as having come to itself
and become free, realizes itself, in that, as free rational will, it
posits itself outwardly,—forms for itself a world corresponding to itself,
which is the expression of the spirit. This objective reality of the
free spirit, which becomes for the individual subject an objective power
whereby the subject is determined in his freedom, and which consequently
is to be recognized by the individual, is, as of a universal character,
for the individual, law. Hence this will of objective rationality is
right, which becomes for the individual, duty. But in that right does
not remain a merely objective power, but makes itself immanent in the individual subject, so that the individual will becomes an expression
Philosophie des Geistes, § 481, sq.; Rechtsphilosophie, p. 22, sqq.
As a theological science ethics forms a part of systematic
theology, in which it stands in closest connection with dogmatics, and
has dogmatics as its immediate presupposition. The two sciences belong
together in organic unity, and cannot be entirely separated from each
other. Dogmatics presents the essence, the contents, and the object
of the religious consciousness; ethics presents this consciousness as
a power determining the human will. Dogmatics embraces the good as reality,
that is, as it, through God, is, or becomes, or, by the fault of moral
creatures, is
Theoretical theology—in contradistinction to practical theology, which presents the ecclesiastico-pastoral application of the subject-matter given in theoretical theology—is partly historical and partly systematic. Ethics has indeed a historical foundation, and stands in constant relation to history, but in itself it is no more history than is dogmatics; exegesis and Church history furnish only the material for ethics. The separating of ethics from dogmatics, with which it was formerly, and up to the time of Danaeus and Calixtus, intimately involved, is difficult, and, in fact, not without violence, entirely practicable; both sciences reach over into each other like two intersecting circles, and have, under all circumstances, some territory in common; the general foundations of ethics are based in the corresponding thoughts of dogmatics.
The usual and quite natural statement, that dogmatics
shows what we should believe, and ethics what we should do, is only proximatively correct, and is inadequate; for also the moral laws and
maxims are an object of faith; and “what we should believe” bears, even
in the correct expression itself, the character of a moral requirement.
Believing, itself, is of a moral character; ethics cannot confine itself
to the mere outward action, but must have to do also with the inward,
with the disposition. According to Harless, dogmatics presents the essence
of the objective ground of salvation, and of the objective mediation
of salvation, whereas ethics presents the subjective realization of
the life-goal
The difficulty in defining the difference lies less
in the general antithesis than rather in those points where both sciences
must treat of the same topics. The doctrines of the moral essence of
man, of the divine law, of sin, of sanctification, of the Church, belong
strictly to dogmatics; but ethics must necessarily treat
Comp. Palmer: Moral, 1864, p. 21, sqq.
From all this it is apparent that ethics has dogmatics necessarily as
its presupposition—that it is the second and not the first. Ethics is
faith as having become a subjective life-power—faith in so far as it
is an operative force, The popular instruction in the Scriptures implies,
throughout, this relative position of dogmatics and ethics, in that
it presents the moral command after the subject-matter of faith, and
bases it thereon; thus already in the Mosaic legislation (
Deviating entirely from this view, Rothe
places ethics in a wholly different field from dogmatics. In his view
ethics belongs to speculative, and dogmatics to historical, theology;
they do not stand along-side of each other, do not run parallel to each
Ethik, i,
38, sqq. All references to Rothe
are to the first edition of his Ethik.
OF the three possible methods of presenting ethics, the empirical, the
philosophical, and the theological, the first and most ancient is to
be regarded as the mere fore-court to the science itself. And philosophical
ethics, as resting upon the inner necessity of rational thinking, can
never, even when it is inspired by a Christian spirit, entirely assume
the place of theological ethics, and displace the latter as a lower
stage of the science; rather can it only be the scientific presupposition
and support of the same, without, however, taking up into itself its
actual collective contents; for theological ethics bears in its foundation
and essence predominantly an historical character—has for its source
the historical revelation, and for
A merely empirical ethics, furnishing only a series of observations
and rules, as with the Chinese, the Indians, the older Grecian sages,
and also to a large extent inside of the scope of Christian history,
is only a collection of material for scientific ethics, but not ethics
itself. In the sphere of science we have to do only with the antithesis
of philosophical and theological ethics, in the place of which, however,
we may not, as Schleiermacher does, Christl. Sitte, p. 24.
The antithesis between philosophical and theological ethics
is in itself simple and clear; for philosophical ethics, only that is
valid which is developed from the per se necessary thought, with inner
necessity; it presents the moral as a pure revelation of reason; theological
ethics, on the contrary, conceives it as a revelation of faith in the
personal God and in the historical Christ—as an expression of obedience
to the revealed will of God; hence between the two methods of presentation
there is in fact not merely an antithesis of method and source, but
also of compass. Theological ethics, embracing also the sphere of the
historical facts of free will-determination, transcends the limits of
philosophical ethics. The two could only then be perfectly co-extensive
when the sphere of moral freedom should be merged into that of unconditional
necessity; that is, when the
Moral, p. 19.
While purely philosophical ethics can develop only the general moral
ideas, but not their application to definite historically-arisen relations,
on the other hand, a purely theological ethics, as absolutely excluding
all philosophical treatment, is defective, at least, in scientific respects.
Theological ethics can appropriate to itself philosophy, and it is all
the more scientific the more it does this; but it cannot take philosophy
as its exclusive ground and source without ceasing to be theological.
Hence theological ethics is, in respect to extent of contents and to
the means at its disposal, richer than purely philosophical ethics.
The highest perfection of Christian ethics is a vital union of the philosophical
and the theological manner of treatment, namely, in that the ideas given
in the moral reason itself are treated and speculatively developed as
such, and receive from Christian revelation their religious confirmation;
while, on the other hand, the actual truths lying in the sphere of the
free activity of man himself are taken up from revelation and from historical
experience. Such a presentation of ethics preserves its Christianly-theological
character by the fact that, in view of the constantly-renewed alternation
of philosophical systems, and of their not unfrequently weighty and
essential mutual contradictions, it does not make the validity of the
firmly-established truths of revelation dependent on their agreement
with a particular philosophical system, but, on the contrary, makes
the acceptance of philosophical thoughts and of their sequences dependent
on their harmonizing with the certain truths of revelation. If this
This
antithesis between philosophical and theological ethics is entirely
rejected by Rothe, in that he presents a theological ethics which is
essentially speculative, and in that he definitely distinguishes theological
speculation from philosophical, and requires of theological ethics that
it must, as a science, be also speculative, whereas dogmatics cannot
in the nature of things be such. Every speculation begins with a proto-datum,—philosophical
speculation with the self-consciousness. But this self-consciousness
is not mere self-consciousness, but is at the same time in some manner
a determined one, is also a God-consciousness; the religious subject
recognizes his self-consciousness not as an absolutely pure one, but
as always at the same time affected by an objective determinateness,
namely, the religious. Man is never otherwise conscious of himself than
as being conscious at the same time also of his relation to God. This
point may, says Rothe, be in itself controverted, but in the sphere
of piety, that is, in the theological sphere, it is not controverted:
“we deny to no one the right to question the reality of piety itself,
but with impiety we have, as a matter of principle, nothing to do; there
can be a system of theology only on the presupposition of piety; for
all who are impious our system of speculation has no validity, and,
as related to them, we must continue in error.” According to this, there
are two kinds of speculation, a religious and a philosophical; the latter
has its point of departure in simple self-consciousness, the former
in the pious self-consciousness; philosophical speculation conceives
the “All” through the idea of the ego, theological speculation through
the idea of God, but both are à priori; hence theological speculation
is theosophy; it begins with the idea of God, with which idea philosophical
speculation ends; the evidence is the same in both. Speculative theology
must be essentially different for every peculiar form of piety, inasmuch
as the starting-point, namely, the peculiarly-determined pious consciousness,
is different. Hence there is also a peculiarly Christianly-speculative
theology, and likewise for every Church a special one, and hence also
a special evangelico-Christian theology; and this special speculative
theology has in fact validity only for this particular Church—is for
the others without significancy. This theological
This
view appears to us entirely erroneous. We cannot possibly admit any
other than a purely philosophical speculation, at least as of a scientific
character. In the first place it is incorrect, in point of fact, that
philosophical speculation always proceeds from self-consciousness as
in contradistinction to theological speculation, which is made to proceed
from the God-consciousness. Spinoza starts directly from the idea of
God, and his philosophy will surely not be called a theological speculation;
in like manner also Schelling. Hegel begins with the idea of pure being;
and this is certainly also not identical with self-consciousness.—Theological
speculation, Rothe holds, differs only in its beginning, from philosophical,
in that this beginning is, in it, somewhat more determined and more
rich in contents, namely, as being already a religiously-determined
self-consciousness. This is the view of Schleiermacher, who also proceeds
from the religiously-determined self-consciousness; however, Schleiermacher
does not undertake to base thereon a system of speculation, but simply
a theological description of the pious conditions of the soul, and to
argue toward their presuppositions, which in fact cannot, in any sense,
be called speculation. Rothe—herein less consequential than Schleiermacher—goes
beyond him in two respects: first, in that he carries the religious
determinateness, the self-consciousness, even into the confessional
phase; and, secondly, in that he undertakes to make this purely empirical
fact the foundation of a system of speculation.
Rothe presents theological speculation as
co-etaneous, along-side of philosophical. Now, however, if, as he expressly
affirms, philosophical speculation in proceeding in its development
necessarily arrives at the idea of God, and there ends, that is, precisely
at the point where theological speculation begins, then, in fact, speculation
may, from this idea of God as obtained in a purely scientific manner,
simply advance further, so that consequently we now have a theological
speculation resting not upon a fortuitous and empirical presupposition,
but upon a scientific result,—to which the one assumed by Rothe bears
only a relation of premature over-haste. The entire distinction between
theological and philosophical speculation, we must consequently declare
as scientifically unfounded; and we cannot, with Rothe, look upon the
difference between philosophical and theological ethics as the difference
between a speculation without presuppositions and a speculation with
presuppositions, but only as the difference between a speculative and
a non-speculative ethics, or an ethics resting essentially on history.
Purely philosophical ethics knows nothing of Christ, of redemption,
nor even of sin as a reality, and hence cannot possibly answer the full
idea of a Christian ethics, although it may and should, in that which
it is competent to embrace, be of a very Christian character: and as
the entire moral life of the Christian rests upon redemption and spiritual
regeneration, hence there is not a single point in this life, where
at purely philosophical ethics could suffice. Hence the view of Schleiermacher,
that Christian and philosophical
Christ. Sitte, Beil, p. 4. Ibid., pp. 35, 36.
Theological and philosophical ethics do not mutually exclude each other, but stand in intimate connection, and may go hand in hand; we must admit both of them, each in its own field, and each with the task of combining the other as much as possible in itself. But for each of the two manners of treatment, we must lay claim to universal validity. Whether we have recognized a truth philosophically or theologically, we regard this much as settled, that it is a truth not merely for us Protestant or Roman Christians, but for all men who seek truth at all; and those who do not admit it, we can regard only as in error. This is not intolerance, but simple fidelity to the truth; every truth is, in this sense, intolerant,—claims the right to be accepted of all men.
Ethics is frequently so treated that philosophical ethics, as pure, precedes, and Christian ethics as applied ethics, follows. This is not correct; Christian ethics is not a mere application of philosophical, but has, in so far as it rests on history, an essentially other character, and other ground-thoughts peculiar to itself.—We purpose here to present a System of Christian ethics, which, for the reason that it is to embrace all the phases of the Christianly-moral, must be essentially theological; but in the inner organizing and in the developing of the ground-thoughts, philosophical considerations must furnish the deeper scientific foundation.
CHRISTIAN
ethics cannot be understood without its history, nor the latter without
the history of the systems lying anterior to and outside of Christianity.
The mistakes committed in a large portion of the field of more recent ethics, spring largely from non-attention to the history of this science; and yet no other theological science has so long and rich a history, and so many relations to the history of the human mind anterior to and outside of Christianity, as, in fact, this very one; Greek philosophy has had, upon the development of Christian ethics, a wide-reaching influence. But the history of ethics cannot be separated from the history of the moral spirit in general, out of which ethics sprang, and of which it is simply the scientific form; also the moral consciousness itself has a history, the knowledge of which is of much higher importance than that of the history of mere ethics. Not every moral consciousness has produced an ethical system, for only the more gifted nations have risen to science at all, and ethics is one of the most difficult; but the moral consciousness of a people, even though not developed into a scientific form, is to be looked upon as the historical basis for another higher and ultimately scientific national consciousness. Even as botany considers the germination and foliation no less than the blossoms and fruit,—as the history of religious doctrines presupposes the history of the religious life, as the history of philosophy presupposes and develops further the history of civilization,—so also the history of ethics cannot be given without, at the same time, taking into consideration the history of the moral consciousness itself; the ethical thoughts of Plato and Aristotle are not to be understood merely from themselves, but largely only in the light of the moral spirit of the Greeks in general.
The history of ethics itself, though frequently
touched upon, has not as yet’ been sufficiently presented. The most
complete work is that of Stäudlin: “History of the Ethics of Jesus,”
1799-1823, 4 vols., of which the work, “History of Christian Morals
since the Revival of the Sciences,” which appeared as early as 1808,
is to be regarded as a continuation; and to it is to be added the same
author’s “History of Moral Philosophy,” 1822 (and, as a short compendium,
the “History of Philosophical,
De Wette wrote a “Christian Ethics,” 1819; (more briefly presented in his “Compendium of Christian Ethics,” 1833, in which the history of ethics constitutes far more than half of the whole book; the first work, because of the negligent printing, is almost useless for unprofessional persons, and is very dependent on Stäudlin, even to his typographical errors, though in particular parts surpassing him).—(Meiner’s “History of Ethics,” 1800, utterly worthless. Marheineke’s “History of Christian Ethics,” etc., 1806,—only a fragment.) E. Feuerlein’s “Ethics of Christianity in its Historical Chief-Forms,” 1855, furnishes only unequal and often unclear or inadequate outlines; the same author published a “Philosophical Ethics in its Historical Chief-Forms,” 1856-59. Neander’s “History of Christian Ethics,” 1864, enters also upon Greek ethics, though here from a somewhat antiquated stand-point, and is somewhat ununiform, breaking off the historical development by an unhappy classification, and furnishing rather single- points than a connected presentation.
The most of historical heathen
nations have indeed collections of ethical life-rules, based almost
always
The heathen moral consciousness can be understood, evidently, only in the light of the religious consciousness upon which it always rests. That, of the majority of heathen nations, we possess only loosely-connected moral precepts and observations, moral adages and practical life-rules, but not ethical systems proper, is no obstacle to our knowledge of their moral consciousness, inasmuch as systems always bear in fact traces of the subjective character of their authors, whereas, the popular collections in question, based, for the most part, on divine authority, are an objective unclouded expression of the consciousness dominant in a people.
It is the essence of heathenism to possess the
idea of God only under some form of limitation, to conceive of God as
a being in some degree limited; See the author’s Gesch. d. Heidentums,
1, § 11 sqq.
With the prevalence
of such views the goal of moral effort, the highest good, can also be
embraced only as a limited something. Among the naturalistic nations,
the Chinese and the Indians, this goal has no positive contents at all,
for the personal spirit as placed under the dominion of an impersonal nature-power cannot aim to attain to any thing positive which did not
already exist; its goal can only be the greatest possible self-denial
of the personal spirit as over against nature. In China the moral spirit
can attain to nothing which has not already always existed by nature
and hence with necessity; it behooves not to create a spiritual, moral
kingdom, but to uphold the eternal kingdom of necessarily-determined
order as already existing by nature without any personal act,—to subordinate
to, and keep in passive harmony with, it, one’s own worthless individual
existence.—In India, with the Brahmins as well as with the Buddhists,
where the consciousness of the personal spirit has awakened to a much
higher validity, moral effort assumes a truly tragic character, in that
the total, violent contradiction of the personal spirit to the personality-overwhelming
divine nature-entity comes to consciousness. The ultimate goal of the
moral spirit is here not only not a positive entity, nor indeed even
the upholding of an eternally-uniform world-order, but the passing away
of personal existence into the general indeterminate nature-existence;
the highest good is complete self-annihilation through moral effort.—With the Occidental Indo-Germanic nations the personal spirit is indeed
no longer merged into the impersonal nature-existence, for the divine
is itself conceived of as personality. But because of the merely limited
individuality of the divine,—which rises to the height of an infinite
personal spirit only in the last results of philosophy, not recognized
by the masses of the people,—the certainty of the moral goal falls away
also. The personal spirit looks not to cease to be, to vanish in the
mechanical whirl-din of the great world-machine, as in China, nor to
melt away into the incomprehensible and ineffable proto-Brahma or nirvana
as in India, on the contrary,
The moral freedom of the person is indeed actually denied only by a few of the more consequential philosophers of India, but yet it is nowhere recognized in its full truth. With the Chinese, it is smothered under the weight of all-dictating State-law; with the Brahminic Indians a radical Pantheism admits only for the less-clearly and less-logically thinking casses of the masses, a very limited form of freedom; but to the more educated consciousness all initiatorily-active freedom appears as illegitimate, as per se sinful, or, more consequentially still, as mere appearance. Impersonal Brahma is the solely real existence, and all individuality is but an absolutely dependent, immediate manifestation-form of this One, utterly devoid of free self-determination.—The Greek even in the highest philosophy, far beyond the limits of the national consciousness, concedes free moral self-determination not to man as man, but only to the free Greek; the barbarian has only a half-humanity, is utterly incapable of true virtue, and is not called to free service under the moral idea, but only to an unfree service under the free Greek. Even Aristotle knows nothing of a general morality for all men.
One of the most hampering limits
of heathen morality, is its total lack of the idea of humanity. The
religion of the Buddhists,—the sole one which transcends the limits
of nationality, and even in many respects approximates Christian views,—has indeed conceived the thought of humanity as equally called in all
its representatives to truth and morality, and has sent out
The consciousness
of a guiltily-incurred moral depravity of unredeemed humanity, which
gives to Christian morality a so deeply earnest back-ground, finds in
heathendom but faint and even delusory echoes. To the Chinese all reality
is good; the sea of life is mirror-smooth, at worst, is but superficially
disturbed by light waves which the shortest calm suffices to settle
again. To the Indian all existence is equally good and equally evil,—equally
good, in that all reality is the divine existence itself,—equally evil,
in that it is at the same time an untrue and an illegitimate self-alienation
of the solely-existing Brahma, or, with the Buddhists, an expression
of absolute nullity. The guilt lies not on man, but on God and on existence
in general; man suffers from the untruthfulness of reality, but has
not himself guiltily occasioned it.—The Persian conceives of evil in
the world much more earnestly and with higher moral truthfulness. Humanity
is really morally corrupted, and is so because of a moral guilt, because
of a fall from the good; and man has the task of morally battling against
the evil and for the good. But this fall lies yon-side of human action
and of human guilt,—lies in the sphere of the divine itself. Not the
rational creature, not man, has guiltily fallen, but a god; the divine
is itself hostilely dualistic,—the good god is from the beginning opposed
by the guilty evil one, and the real world-not merely the moral one,
but also nature—is the work of two mutually morally-opposing divine
creative powers. In this—no longer naturalistic, but moral—dualism
there lies a much higher truth than in the Indian doctrine of unity,
according to which the distinction of the world from God is explained
away into a mere appearance, into a self-deception, either of Brahma,
or, and more consequentially, of man; and man has, in the Persian view,
a much higher personal moral task. But in that this view throws the
weight of the guilt from man and upon the divinity, the moral struggle
The obscured and only very partially
developed moral consciousness of savage nations lies outside of the
field of history; Gesch. des Heident., i, p. 40 sqq., p.
163 sqq. Ibid., 251 sqq., 303
sqq.
The Chinese, whose religious views constitute a barren and tale, but clear and consequential Naturalism, have special interest for moral life-rules; the ancient books of their religion, the Kings, which were collected and digested by Confucius in the sixth century before Christ, contain in the main simply a very detailed system of morals; so also nearly all their later religious, philosophical, and historical writings.
The life of the All bears every-where, even in
its spiritual phase, a nature-character; there is no history with a
spiritual goal to be attained to by moral activity, but only a nature-course
with a constantly uniform character manifesting itself in constant,
unvaried repetition; morality looks not forward, but simply backward
to that which has been and will always remain as it is, and all reformatory
action upon an occasionally somewhat deteriorated present is but a mere
return to, the previous better. Instead of progress the goal of moral
effort is uniformly simply a conserving, or a return to the past. There
is no ideal
As being a mere expression of general, natural world-order, morality stands in direct connection with the course of nature. The observance of the just mean preserves equilibrium in the All, and every disturbance of this equilibrium by sin re-echoes through the whole, and effects, directly, disturbances in nature, especially when the offending one is the vicegerent of heaven, the emperor,—who is called by his very office to the presenting of a moral ideal, of a pattern of virtue. Drought, famine, inundations, pestilence, and the like, are not so much positively inflicted punishments of a personally-ruling God, as rather direct natural consequences of the sins of the emperor, and of the people as imitating him. Instead of an historical connection and an historical working of sin upon coming generations, as in the Christian world-theory, there is here a natural connection and a natural working of sin upon contemporary nature and the contemporary generation. This naturalistic parallel to the Christian doctrine of inherited sin, has a deeply earnest significancy. Man in his moral activity has to do not merely with himself, but with the totality of the universe; by sinning, he disturbs the order and the harmony of existence in general; every sin is an outrage against the All, and consequently also against the highest manifestation thereof, namely, the Middle Kingdom; all sins are crimes, all are hurtful to the public weal; in the Chinese view nature suffers by sin; in the Christian, history.
The focus of the moral life is the family; in it manifests
itself directly the divine life,—which consists in the antithesis of
the male or active and of the female or passive, in heaven-force and
earth-material, and in the union of the two. The family life is a living
worship of God, and the family duties are the highest, and have the
unconditional precedence of all others; to the obedience of children
to parents all other obedience must give way. What heaven is for the
world, that the father is for
But the full realization of morality appears in the state, which is simply the all-sidedly developed family. The emperor, as the son and vicegerent of heaven not governing arbitrarily but by eternally valid heavenly laws, is the father and teacher of the people,—not merely protecting right, but also, as a pattern of virtue, guiding and conserving the morality of the people. In China every thing is the State, and the State is everything; it is the great ocean into which all the streams of the spirit-life ultimate, and morality itself stands absolutely under the guardianship of the State. Not as man, but only as a citizen of the State and a member of the family, has the Chinaman a moral life; all morality is accomplished by obedience to the laws of the State; and between civil and moral law there is no distinction.
The Indians, the Brahminic as also the Buddhistic,
conceived morality, on the basis of their consequentially developed
Pantheism, essentially negatively. All finite reality, and above all,
that of the human personality, is null, untrue, and illegitimate,—either
because, with the Brahmins, it is only the self-estranged divinity, or
because, with the Buddhists, the essence of all existence in general
is nihility; hence the ground-character of morality is self-denial,
world-renunciation,—a passive endurance instead of creative activity.
The moral goal, the highest good, is not a personal possession, but
a surrendering of personality to the impersonal divine essence or to
nihility. There is no realizing and no shaping of a moral kingdom based
on personality, nor even a preserving of existing reality, but a dissolving
of the same. All reality, in so far as it is a finite formation,
The Brahminic Indians have, in their books of law, ancient and rich collections of moral doctrines. Almost equally esteemed with the Vedas, and attributed to a divine origin, is the book of the Laws of Manu, the parts of which belong to very different ages, though the most recent belong certainly anterior to the fourth century before Christ; the moral precepts proper are as yet unseparated from the religious and civil. Also the Vedas and the later philosophical and legal writings contain much moral matter.
Basing himself, in contrast to the nature-dualism
of the Chinese, upon the unity of the universe as divine, the Brahmin
regards the real World merely as a, neither necessary nor strictly legitimate,
but rather mere dream-like self-alienation of primitive Brahma, which
is destined, after an essentially purposeless
For man, even in so far as he is an object of the moral activity, the Indian has no concern; he has a higher love for nature, which stands nearer related to the nature-divinity, and constitutes the narrowest circle around the divine center-point. In nature he beholds his mother, and he loves it reverently as the most direct and most unclouded revelation of Brahma. The same Indian who can heartlessly see a pariah famish without so much as stretching out to him a helping hand, reverently avoids, as a severe sin, the breaking of a grass-blade, or the swallowing of a gnat; a Brahmin allows himself not, without ground, to break even an earth-clod.—Marriage and the family-life in general can only be a transition-stage for the, as yet, morally immature. The Brahmin who has risen to true knowledge must leave father and mother, wife and child, and, dead to the world and to himself, live henceforth only in solitary contemplation of Brahma,—standing for years, in the forest, upon the same spot, emotionless as a tree-trunk, and seeking or accepting only the scantiest food; every thing finite must have become absolutely indifferent to him, until, vegetating on like a plant, and fading away, he attains to the long-sought death. For society and politics, only those who belong to the inferior castes can have any further interest,—for the Brahmin himself these things have no attraction, and, higher than the warrior-hero and than the zealously-ruling prince, is he who exchanges a crown for the life of the hermit.
More remarkable still is the moral consciousness of the Buddhists, whose world-historical and influential religion—an off-shoot of the Brahminic—was founded by the Indian prince Sakya-Muni in the sixth century before Christ,—the sole heathen religion which sent out missions beyond the national limits,—so that within a few centuries it extended itself throughout all middle, southern, and eastern Asia, as far as into Japan. The sacred books of the Buddhists are chiefly of moral contents, for here religion passes over almost entirely into morality.
While in Brahminism the ground and essence of all existence
is the one absolutely indeterminate and un-positive proto-Brahma, Buddhism
goes a step further, and declares this indeterminate, empty substratum
to be nonentity itself. All things are sprung of nonentity; hence nonentity
is the contents of all being,—hence all reality is per se null, and
finds its truth only in that it returns to nothing. As the beginning,
so is also the end of all being, and hence also that of man and of his
moral efforts, nonentity. Every thing is vain, in heaven and upon earth;
heaven and earth themselves are vain, and upon the ruins of a crumbling
world sits, eternally enthroned, empty Naught. The moral element of
this atheistical religion lies in the fact that the Buddhist is really
and truly in earnest with the comfortless thought, and,—in striking
contrast to the lustful, pleasure-seeking atheism of modern times,—presents
to man the God-forsaken world as in fact really such, and forbids to
him all enjoyment of the same,—that he has no joy in it, but makes deep
grief at all existence the foundation of all morality. The Buddhist
is fully conscious of what it signifies to place nature above spirit,
to seek God only in nature and in the world in general. Not being able
to rise to the conception of a personal God, he disdains the impersonal nature-God, and chooses rather to live without God in the world,—only,
however, as one who has no hope at all. Buddhism in its pure form is
a religion of despair, and its ethics answers to this character, and
is essentially different from the Brahminic. Here no divine proto-Brahma
unfolds himself into a world; and hence the different castes of mankind
have no longer any essential meaning; no one man stands, by nature,
nearer to the divinity than another, but all men are equal; there is
no plant-like branching-out of a divine proto-germ, but only a homogeneous
sea of equally-
Buddhistic ethics contains but few positive precepts; almost all of them are negative; virtue consists essentially in omitting; “thou shalt not,” is the almost unvarying beginning of the precepts; all of them aim simply at preventing the spirit from taking delight in existence,—forbid worldly pleasure, but do not create a moral reality; and, as relating to other living creatures, beast as well as man, they guard against all multiplication of the already so widely-prevalent misery. Hence there goes here, hand in hand, with the intensest world-despising, the greatest gentleness toward all living beings; no creature may be tormented, nor even slaughtered; in order to alleviate the pain of another creature, man should rather himself endure it. Hence the Buddhists have been, in fact, the gentlest of heathen nations; but their gentleness is not so much an expression of active love as rather merely of compassion,—is simply a non-interfering, a sparing, but not a positive helping. The dumb, patient enduring of pain, a complete indifference to joy and sorrow, is not the heroic pride of a deeply self-conscious personality, but the womanly, submissive patience of a heart broken with pain.
The moral consciousness of the Egyptians and of the Semitic nations, especially of the
Assyrians and Babylonians, is, as yet, only very imperfectly and partially
Egypt stands on the dividing-line
between the naturalistic and the personally-spiritual world-theory;
the divine is indeed primarily and originally, as yet, a pure nature-power,
but it struggles up into spiritual personality, and such a personality
is recognized also in man; among the Semitic nations this consciousness
comes into the fore-ground more prominently still. The presupposition
of the moral is no longer the perfect and uniform goodness of existence,
as with the Chinese, nor the essential evilness of the same, as with
the Indians, but an inner moral antagonism of existence. Over against
the personal-become good divinities, stands evil as a divine entity different
from them, and which is primarily less spiritual, and expressive rather
of mere nature character; and man in his moral struggle stands in the
-midst of this antagonism,—has to determine himself for the divine good,
and against the not less divine evil. Thus, in virtue of the contest
of the antagonism dominant in the world, the moral subject becomes more
nearly independent
But this breaking-forth of the rational
spirit and of its moral task into greater distinctness, manifests itself
otherwise among the Egyptians than among the Semitic nations. It is
among the Egyptians that the personal nature of the moral spirit comes
first to full self-consciousness. The spirit is a something other than
nature and higher than it,—is not destined to servitude under it, but
to personal, free moral self-determination and to personal immortality,
over against death-dominated nature. But this antithesis of the moral
personal spirit to nature does not as yet rise, in the earthly life,
to complete victory. Even as Osiris succumbs to the evil divinity, Typhon,
so must man ultimately succumb in the struggle with unspiritual nature,—only,
however, in order to attain in the yon-side to the full enjoyment of
spiritual personality. The morning-twilight of the freedom of the rational
spirit dawns in Egypt, but it is not as yet day. It is only through
struggle, through suffering and dying, that the spirit becomes free,—in
the world of the gods as well as in the world of man. Osiris becomes
a true ruler only in the next world, and so with man also; only out
of death spring forth life and victory. Also over the Egyptian’s moral
life a dusky vail is thrown, a melancholy breath poured out,—as with
the Indians, though relieved by a brighter hope. To the Indian all moral
life is but a rapidly passing meteor, vanishing away without trace;
to the Egyptian it is a conflict, painful indeed, but resulting in an
ultimate permanent victory of the moral person. Man has not as yet complete
freedom and complete personal validity, but he will have them after
death if he only struggles manfully here below; and he is conscious
of entire personal responsibility for his life and his fortune after
death. His personally-moral life falls not a prey to a universally-dominating
The
heathen Semitic nations, especially the Assyrians and Babylonians, base
themselves, in religion and morality, entirely on the ground of the subjective
spirit, of the individual personality. The general unity of naturalism they have
given up, but. they have not as yet risen to that of the infinite spirit. The
spirit appears only in the multiplicity of single forms; hence these nations
never appear in history as a unity, but always as a plurality. In religion as
well as in morality there is manifested the reckless independence of the (now,
for the first time, vigorously
TO a higher stand-point, though
not to a higher development thereof, than the earlier nations, rise
the merely transitorily world-historical Persians. The violent dualism
of two mutually morally-opposed personal gods, calls also morality
to an earnest moral struggle against ante-mundane, god-sprung evil;
the moral personality comes much more emphatically into the fore-ground
than ever before; the moral task becomes more difficult, but it has
the certain promise of ultimate victory over evil, not merely in a yon-side
life, but within the scope of history itself. Morality has here, for
the first time in heathendom, a positive goal inside of the field of
history, namely, the realizing
The Persians,
whose world-historical significancy proper extends from Cyrus to Alexander
the Great, have not been able within this short period to develop their
religiously-moral consciousness into a scientifically matured form.
The chief source for the same—the Avesta—is far inferior in contents
and development of thought to the so-rich and deeply-suggestive sacred
writings of the Indians; and yet the moral view, as a whole, is a higher
one. The real world, in which man has morally to work, is here no longer
the immediate divine essence itself, but it has come into existence
essentially by a personal, divine act. The spirit, in its personal reality,
is no longer a mere momentary phenomenon upon the alone-eternal nature-ground,
as in China and India, nor is it fettered and hemmed by nature, as over-potent
in this life, as is the case in Egypt; but it is already the higher
creative power over nature, although not as yet a perfectly free and
omnipotent Creator. Hence the world, in its relation to the moral spirit,
is no longer a foreign and heterogeneous element, but as a spirit product,
is unhostile and even congenial to the spirit; man begins to feel at
home in the world, and hence he places no longer the goal of his moral
striving merely in the yon-side, but he conceives it as to-be-attained-to
Although, according to this,
man has thrown off the guilt of evil reality from himself upon the world
of the gods, still he conceives of his moral nature and life-task, in
regard to this evil, more highly than did the earlier nations. Man,
as created good by the good god, is placed, with complete personal freedom,
in the midst of the moral antagonism of the world, and has now actually
to accomplish in his own person the moral task of coming constantly
into closer communion with Ahura-Mazda, and to contend against Angra-mainyus
and all his works. Morality is a struggle, and rests not upon mere natural
feelings and impulses, but upon the distinct consciousness of the holy
will of the good god,—upon the Word expressly revealed to men. By this
view, morality is made to throw off all
In correspondence to its religious presupposition, Persian morality bears primarily a negating character, though in a wholly different manner than among the Indians. While the system of the latter is directed against existence, and especially against the personal nature of man, Persian morality on the contrary directs itself, with the most complete consciousness of the validity of the personality, negatingly against every thing which belongs to the world of Angra-mainyus. Self-purification from every thing which stands really, or even merely symbolically, in relation with evil, death, or corruption,—the killing of poisonous and hurtful animals, and the like, are not merely moral requirements, but even acts of worship, and the Avesta gives, on these points, very precise and detailed directions.
But also the positive phase of the moral life
is much more highly developed in the moral consciousness of the Persians
than in that of the earlier nations. The Persians acquired
Where evil is no longer regarded as a merely abstract something, as a quality of existence in general, but as a concrete guilt reality, not a mere neutrum, but as borne by personality, there only can the moral struggle against the same be really earnest. The Chinaman labors quietly and busily in mechanical persistence; the Indian patiently endures; the Egyptian mourns, and longs to pass out of this world; the Shemite riots and enjoys; but the Persian battles with a manfully-moral earnestness. The defective phase of his moral consciousness is essentially this, that he throws evil off from himself upon the sphere of the gods,—that he has not recognized the evil of his own heart.
The moral
consciousness of the Greeks is very different from that of the Persians;
though rising above it, it yet seems to throw the approximation to the
Christian view, that lay in the Persian consciousness, farther again
into the back-ground.. The heathen mind could not remain stationary
at Persian dualism; the Greeks endeavor to bring about a reconciliation
of the antagonism of the universe, by throwing this antagonism into
the past, and by regarding the present as an expression of the harmony
of existence as effected at the very beginning of history by a victory
The precedent antagonism of existence, which comes to consciousness in all heathen religions,—primarily as an antithesis of nature and spirit, which rises with the Persians to a moral character,—is, with the Greeks, not indeed entirely overcome (heathenism in fact never rises beyond it), but in fact reduced to harmony, a harmony, however, which, as viewed from a Christian stand-point, must be regarded as delusive. The consciousness of this antagonism comes to expression in myths concerning ancient combats between the spiritual gods and Titanic nature-powers; the gods came off victorious, and the present world expresses the peaceful reconciliation of the earlier antagonisms; every-where, both in the world of gods and of men, spirit and nature are in harmonious union; there is nowhere mere spirit, and nowhere mere nature. What appears as a hostile power over the personal spirit, was already vanquished anterior to human history; no inimical, evil god disturbs the beautiful harmony of existence; the Titans have been thrust into Tartarus. The foundation of Greek morality is therefore joy in existence,—love as enjoyment; man has not to sacrifice his existence and his wishes, but only to heighten the former, and to fulfill the latter, in so far as they express the character of harmony, of the beautiful; he has not, as with the Indians, to renounce the world, but on the contrary to enjoy it, as bearing every-where the stamp of the beautiful, and to remain in genial peace therewith,—has not, as the Persian, to battle against its reality as permeated with evil, but simply to pluck from it the fruits of happiness. Greek morality is the morality of him who is complacently self-satisfied, without any severe inner struggle.
The Hellene has, in his consciousness of the harmony
of existence,
A high sense for beauty raises indeed the
moral consciousness to a high and harmonious conception of moral beauty,
and the poets sketch moral ideals with master-hand; but these ideals
are more for esthetic enjoyment than for moral inmitation. Even morality
becomes to the Hellene a matter of mere spectacle, and in no heathen
nation is the contrast between the ideal and the real life so great,
as in that one which conceived the ideal the highest. For the practical
life the requirements of the moral consciousness were other than for
poetry; the same people which admired female ideals, such as Penelope,
Antigone, and Electra, as presented in song and upon the stage, placed
womanhood and marriage, and the family-life in general, much lower in
real life than did the Chinese or the ancient Germans; and it was not
merely in the censured license of the frivolous world, but also in the
moral views of the most highly cultured, that talented concubines (especially
after the example of Aspasia, notorious for her connection with Pericles,
and also honored by Socrates) stood higher than house-wives proper,
and became the real representatives of female culture, and ideals of
female grace. Sparta, by its legislation, overthrew on principle the
proper life
Plato: Symp., p. 192. Plutarch: Solon, c. 20.
However fully the moral consciousness of the worth and dignity of the
personality is developed, still the dignity of true manhood is conceded
only to the free Hellenes, who constituted by far the smallest number
of the Greek population. (In Attica at its highest prosperity there
were 400,000 slaves, in Corinth 460,000). The barbarian and the slave
have no right to the full dignity of personality. Freedom without slavery
is, in the eyes of a Greek, an absurdity. The generally prevalent mild
treatment of their slaves was more an expression of natural kindheartedness,
and of personal interest than of conceded right; the Spartan slave-massacres
were the expression of an undisputed right of the State and of the free
citizens; even Plato and Aristotle are unable to conceive of a State
and of political freedom without the personal unfreedom of slavery.
The so-called notion of “humanitarianism” limits the practice of this
virtue to the possessors of slaves; and the higher the right and the
might of the free citizens are placed, so much the more complete and
Though the reality
of the moral consciousness and of the moral life of the Greek is in
many respects far below that of other heathen nations, still the moral
idea that underlies this reality is a higher one. That which, in the
Christian worldview, forms the presupposition of all truly moral life,
namely, the reconciliation of the contradiction and of the antagonism
in the world of reality, the higher right and the higher power of the
personal spirit over unfree nature, this is recognized by the Greeks,
though indeed with heathen perversions, in a higher manner than is the
case among the earlier heathen nations. Only man as redeemed by the
historical redemption-act from the power of his sinful naturalness,
and as now for the first having risen to a truly free moral personality,
is capable, according to the Christian view, of accomplishing true morality;— also the Hellene makes the reconciliation of the antagonism, the actual
harmony of human nature and of existence in general, the presupposition
of morality, and conceives this reconciliation as one that falls indeed
before human history, but yet is accomplished by the free act of the
personal spirit; whereas with the earlier nations (where the consciousness
of the inner antagonism and contradiction is also recognized) the right
of the personal spirit is either rejected, or else thrown for its realization
into the far future, either into the life after death, or at least toward
the close of the world’s history. It is true, this thought of a reconciliation
is made possible only by the fact that the consciousness of moral guilt
is kept away from the antagonism that is to be reconciled, and that
this antagonism is conceived rather as of a primitive cosmical character,
and moreover that not man but the personal gods enter into the sphere
thereof, and, battling, overcome,—so that there is left for man nothing
further than the enjoyable repetition of the same in artistic play;
the Olympic games are a commemoration of the battles of the Titans;
and, accordingly, the entire moral life becomes to the Greek an artistic
play;—nevertheless the ground-thought is still of high significancy,—the
thought that only man as having become free through the reconciliation of
the antagonism of real existence is capable of morality. But that the
carrying-out of
To a philosophical form, Wehrenpfennig: Verschiedenheit
d. eth. Princ. b. d. Hellenen, 1856.
The Greeks occupy themselves very early with the nature of the moral;
the most ancient so-called Wise Men are, for the most part, moralists.
It was very long, however, before the Greeks reduced their isolatedly-presented,
and rather empirically-based, moral maxims to any sort of unity and
order. Philosophy proper occupied itself primarily with purely metaphysical
questions, and the moral views expressed were, with the earlier philosophers,
for the most part, a mere supplement of
Socrates was the first who,
as it was said, called philosophy from heaven to the sphere of the earth;
it is with him essentially moral, and, from merely metaphysical speculations,
he turns away with a certain displeasure; even in his consideration
of the idea of God, greater prominence is given to the moral phase of
the divine activity. With him the knowledge of the good is the chief
end of philosophy; but, for the simple reason that here ethics springs
exclusively from philosophy, the element of knowledge far outweighs
in it the element of the heart. The ethics of Socrates is a coldly rational
calculating; it has not, as has Christian ethics, an historical basis
and presupposition, but is invented purely à priori. Man is by nature
thoroughly good,—is, in his freedom, not simply at first as yet undecided,
but he has by nature a decided tendency to the good, just as reason
has a natural affinity for the truth. Evil is by no means to be explained
from mere volition, but only from error. The human understanding can
err, and the act resulting from error is the evil; without error there
would be no evil, and it is absolutely impossible that man should not
also will that which he has recognized as good. It needs, therefore,
only that men be brought to a knowledge of the good, and then they will
also act virtuously. The motive to the moral is not love, but knowledge;
to instruct is to make better; the philosopher is also the virtuous
man, and only the philosopher can practice true virtue; the ignorant
man is also immoral. Self-knowledge—the γνῶθι σεαυτόν—is the presupposition
of all morality,—not, however, in the sense familiar to Christians,
of a knowledge of the heart as inclined to sin, but only in the sense
of a knowledge of the logical nature of the thinking spirit; in his
dialogues, Socrates does not think of bringing men to a knowledge of
their moral guilt,—he simply aims to convince them as to how little
they as yet know. Hence ethics is with him a one-sided doctrine of knowledge.
There is properly-speaking only one virtue, and this is wisdom, that
is, knowledge; and all other virtues are only different forms of this
one virtue. Aristotle: Eth. Nic., vi, 13; iii, 6, 7; Eth. Eud.,
i, 5; vii, 13; Magn. Mor., i, 1, 9; ii, 6; Xen.: Mem., i, 1, 16; iii,
9, 4, 5; iv, 6, 6; Plato: Lach., p. 194 sqq. Apol., p 26; Diog. L., ii, 31.
Practically, wisdom manifests itself mainly
in self-mastery, that is, in governing by knowledge all appetites,
dispositions, feelings, and passions. Man must always remain master
of himself,—must in all circumstances, however different, always act
strictly according to his knowledge and in harmony with himself,—must
not let himself be led by unconscious desires; and, inasmuch as a man’s
knowledge cannot be taken from him, anti as the changeable movements
of feeling are under the control of knowledge, hence man has in this
faculty of knowledge also complete happiness, and the wise man is necessarily
also happy; and this happiness depends exclusively on himself. Therein
consists the freedom of the sage.—Knowledge, virtue, and happiness are
consequently not essentially different from each other,—are simply
different phases of the same thing. In that Socrates essentially identifies
the good with knowledge, he raises it above the arbitrary caprice of
the individual subject, seeing that truth is not dependent on the good
pleasure of said subject. Thus the good has a validity independently
of the individual, and all rational men must recognize the same thing
as good. Hence the moral idea has attained to contents of a general
and necessary character; and Socrates recognizes the objective significancy of
the same, in that he ascribes right wisdom to God alone. Plato: Apol., p. 23.
These general
thoughts form the scientific basis of the subsequent currents of philosophy.
Socrates himself does not rise beyond them and enter into details. Whenever
the question is as to giving to these general thoughts more definite
contents, he refers to the laws of the State, in the fulfillincg of
which man fulfills the requirements of morality. Hence his morality
is merely Greek civic virtue,—has no higher ideal contents. To obey
the laws of the State is the sum of all duties; a δίκαιος is the same
as a νόμιμος. To do good to one’s friends, and evil to one’s enemies,
is a moral requirement, Xen.: Mem., ii, 6, 35. Plato: Rep., i, p. 335; Crito, p. 49.
In general the tendency of Socrates is
toward a dry, prosaic utilitarianism. His moral views, in so far as
they are not idealized by Plato, are devoid of all ideal enthusiasm.
And in his
Mem., iii, 11. Ibid., i,
3, 14, 15.
From
Socrates there sprang up several mutually-differing schools, the peculiarity
and difference of which lie especially in their ethical views.—The Cynics (through Antisthenes) develop the doctrine of Socrates as to
the ethical significancy of knowledge, into one-sided prominence in
its practical application. Knowledge works directly the good; virtue,
as resting exclusively on knowledge, is the highest goal of human life.
It manifests itself essentially in the
Both of these schools undertake to find an objective ground for the moral; in fact, however, neither of them finds any thing more than a strictly subjective one; the Cynics take their starting-point in subjective knowledge, and in the will as determined thereby; the Cyrenaics, in feeling. Both schools are equally one-sided developments of tendencies that existed in germ in Socrates. If knowledge, virtue, and happiness are essentially the same thing, then it is indifferent which of these phases is made the starting-point,—whether it be said that virtue consists in an unconditional obedience to knowledge, or in the striving after happiness; and hence the Cynic is right when he asserts, that in following knowledge we need not inquire as to the sensation of pleasure or displeasure, for true happiness follows from virtue of necessity; and if sensation should seem to contradict this, then it is simply to be despised as a false one. The Cyrenaic is likewise consequential when he asserts, that in following the feeling of happiness we need not inquire as to philosophical knowledge, for as happiness follows from virtue of necessity, hence in the feeling of pleasure we have certain proof that we are practicing virtue, and hence also that we correctly understand the good.
The Cynics
give exclusive predominance to the rational tendency in Socrates; there
is for the good in the widest sense of the word no other decisive criterion
than knowledge. And the knowledge of the good and the manner of action
that rests exclusively upon this knowledge, are the sole thing which
has real worth for man. Only the good in this sense is beautiful, and
The Cyrenaics pushed to
its extreme the other phase. A happiness which I do not feel as pleasure,
is none at all. If virtue makes happy, then I must at once also feel
it. Hence that which is truly good, must at once evince itself as such
in the sphere of the sensibilities; and, conversely, that which impresses
me pleasurably must be good, otherwise there would be another form
of happiness than that produced by virtue. Hence between one pleasure
and another there can be no essential moral difference; consequently
the feeling of pleasure or of displeasure is a perfectly safe guide
in the sphere of the moral. Hence the chief point in practical wisdom
is, to procure for one’s self the feeling of pleasure; from this principle
the inquiry must first take its start. By observation, for example,
I find that temperateness is a virtue, because intemperateness occasions
suffering. Hence true wisdom as founded on this basis consists in the
rational governing of the measure of each particular pleasure, and not
in the knowledge of any general principles; such principles,
Plato gives to Greek ethics a deeply suggestive
scientific basis and form. The world is an expression of the divine ideas, a
thing of beauty. That which answers to the divine idea, namely, the god-like, is
good. Man has the task, in virtue of his rational spirituality, to realize the
good, consciously and with freedom; the essence of virtue is, pleasure in the
good as being the truly beautiful,—love. As expressing in itself the harmony of
the soul; virtue is also the condition of true happiness; not the direct
pleasure-feeling, however, but rational knowledge,
decides as to the good, and such knowledge works the same directly.
Hence virtue is neither indifferent to pleasure, nor does it consist
therein, but it produces it. However, all virtue, because of the imperfection
essentially inherent in existence, remains ever imperfect in the earthly
life; the corporeal nature of man itself is a hinderance.—Virtue is
in its essence unitary, but because of its relation to the manifold
soul-powers and life-manifestations, it manifests itself fourfoldly,
as wisdom, manliness, temperateness, and justness, of which the first
is the fundamental one, and dominates the others.—Morality, however,
is not a something belonging merely to the individual person, but has
its full reality only in the moral community-life, the State, which
rests not so much on the family and on moral society, as rather constitutes,
itself, the exclusive form of the moral society-life, and in fact itself
produces the family and all other moral forms of
Plato, far surpassing Socrates in spiritual profundity, developed with creative originality the thoughts which his master had possessed rather only as mere presentiments, into a scheme of profound speculation, very different from the popular moralizing of the son of Sophroniscus. His ethical thoughts, which are not shaped into a rounded system, are expressed more especially in the following of his works: Protagoras, Laches, Charmides, Euthyphron, Gorgias, Menon, Philebus, Politicus, and in his work which presents the realized moral organism, the Republic or State.
In the thought of the rational spirit,
which Plato conceives more deeply than was ever done before, he obtains
a much more solid foundation for the moral than did the earlier philosophy.
The world is in its essence, not indeed created, but formed by God,
the absolute, rational spirit,—is the most perfect possible expression
of his thoughts, a copy of the divine eternal ideas. The realization
of an idea is the beautiful; hence the cosmos is an object of beauty. Especially in his
Timaeus. Rep.,
pp. 500, 505 sqq., 613 (Steph.); Theaet., 176; Menon, p. 99;
Euthyphron,
p. 13. Gorgias, p. 504 sqq.; Phileb., 64, 65. Gorgias, p. 495 sqq.;
Phaed., p. 237 sqq. Gorgias, 470 sqq., 504-509;
Menon, p. 87 sqq.;
Rep., pp. 352, 444, 583, 585; Phil., pp. 40, 64. Gorgias, pp. 469 sqq.,
477, 527. Phil., p. 11 sqq.; Gorgias, p. 494
sqq. Gorgias, pp.
464, 500; Menon, p. 87 sqq. Menon, p. 87 sqq. Prot., pp. 345, 352 sqq., 358;
Menon, p. 95;
Gorg., p. 468. Timaeus, p. 41; Phaedrus, p. 246
sqq.; Rep., p. 514
sqq. Tim., p. 46 sqq., 54;
Polit., 269; Rep., 611 sqq.; Phaedrus,
246 sqq. Rep., 436 sqq., 589; Gorg., 505. Theaet., p. 176. Phaedo,
p. 63 sqq. Ibid., p. 62.
Hence morality consists primarily in this,
that man turns himself to the ideal, the spiritual, and away from the
merely sensuous. This is, however, only one phase of morality, the ideal;
the other phase is the real one. Even as God, in impressing his ideas
upon matter, shaped the world into an object of beauty, so must also
man actively merge and imprint himself into the actual world-existence,
and shape it into beauty. Hence virtuousness is delight in the beautiful.
And the beautiful is harmony, not merely sensuous but also spiritual.
The essence of virtue is, as this delight in the beautiful, love, or eros,—a thought that is developed by Plato with very great emphasis
(especially in his Phaedrus, Lysis, and Symposium). This is, however,
by no means the Christian idea of love—that love in which man knows
himself at one with another in virtue of communion with God,—but it
is a love to the manifestation, to the beautiful. Not the divine
per
se is loved, but the concrete, and even essentially sensuous manifestation.
It is not a love of soul to soul, but one that clings to the sensuous
form. Hence it has in Plato’s state no significancy for the family.
It is true, eros exalts itself from the sensuous to the spiritual, to
soul-beauty; Symp., 209 sqq.
Symp., p. 181 sqq., 216 sqq.; Phaedrus, p. 250 sqq. Gorg.,
p. 494; Phaedrus, p. 250; Symp., p. 180 sqq. Phaedrus, p. 251 sqq. Symp., p. 183. Phaedrus, p. 237
sqq.; comp. 230, 242; Symp., p. 183.
Plato’s development of the idea of the moral is as
follows:
Protag., pp. 332, 349; Rep., p. 428 sqq., 442
sqq., 591. Euthyphron, p. 6 sqq.; Gorg., pp. 507, 522. Polit.,
pp. 294, 297. Made as early as by Aristophanes, and
even by Aristotle: Polit. ii, 1-5, 12. See K. F. Hermann: Gesch. u.
Syst. d. plat. Phil., 1839, i, 67. Rep., p. 471 sqq.; 499, 502, 540;
Legg., 709.
Not the moral individual persons
make the state, but the state makes the moral persons. Without the state,
and outside of it, there is no morality proper, but only unculture.
Hence the task of the state is to make its citizens into morally good
persons,—to undertake the cure of souls. Gorg., p. 464. Rep., p. 369 sqq., 412 sqq., 435. Ibid., pp. 412-415. Polit.,
p. 289 sqq.; Rep., pp. 374, 397. Rep., p. 469.
The rulers have wisdom as their essential
virtue; there can never be in the state but a few of them, and it is
best when there is but one, and this one a philosopher. The good of
the whole requires the exclusive dominion of the best,—an absolute aristocracy
or a monarchy. Polit., p. 292 sqq.,
297; Rep., pp. 473, 540. Polit., pp.
293-296; Rep., pp. 473, 540.
The truly free personality is conceded accordingly only to the
sage, who is at the same time the ruler; all the other citizens of
the state are, in their entire life, absolutely subject to the state,
the spiritual essence of which finds its expression not so much in abstract
law as in the perfected personality of the ruling sage. Though the members
of the third class are left more free, still this is done only out of
contempt; “even if shoe-cobblers are bad, still they bring little danger
to the state.” Ibid., p. 421. Ibid., p. 402 sqq., 424,
519 sqq., 535. Ibid., p. 386 sqq.
The state as including in itself and guiding all morality,
and as realizing justness, has all and every right; the individual
citizen of the state has rights only in so far as the state concedes
them to him; even to his life he has no right, so soon as he is no longer
capable of benefiting the state; the physicians are charged with the
duty of letting the incurably sick perish without help. Ibid., p. 405 sqq., 409. Ibid.,
pp. 416, 464. Ibid., p. 391 sqq., 568. Rep., pp. 398, 399.
The
family is not the foundation, but only a branch of the state, and merges
itself into it. Personality has here no right of its own. No one consort
belongs to the other, but both belong exclusively to the state. Wedlock
proper is consequently inadmissible, on the contrary the citizen is
obligated to the begetting of children in the interest of the state;
in this connection personal love to the sex has no validity, but only
civic duty. The citizen is not permitted to choose for himself the wife
(who is conceded to him only temporarily), but the state gives her
to him,—ostensibly by lot, but in reality the rulers are to “make use
of falsehood and deception,” and cunningly to guide the lot according
to their own judgment, so as always to bring together the most suitable
pairs. Men are under obligation to beget from their thirtieth to their
fifty-fifth year; women to bear from their twentieth to their fortieth
year. This of itself implies that there is to be no permanent marriage
relation; on the contrary a change of wives is expressly required; no
one is permitted to regard any woman as his own exclusive possession. Ibid., 449
sqq. Ibid, 457. Ibid.. 457 sqq. Rep., 461. Ibid., 451 sqq., 471, 540.
This family-undermining absolutism of the state has to do, however, only with the first two classes, while the producing class are less affected by this care of the state for them, and may act with greater freedom. The great task toward which all moral community-life is directed, namely, to realize the idea of the body politic, by means of the moral freedom of the individual, Plato was unable to accomplish otherwise than by an unconditional and unquestioning non-permission of the free personal self-determination of the individual. Objective morality entirely swallows up the subjective. This is, however, not peculiar to the view of Plato, but is the Greek tendency in general. Plato manifests rather a decided progress toward the development of the free moral personality. While in the legislation of Sparta, somewhat as in that of the Chinese, the impersonal law held ruthless domination, and disallowed of the personal self-determination of the individual in very essential things, and while in the democracy of Athens the irrational caprice of the masses was the predominant power over the individual, in the Platonic state the personal spirit of the wisely taught and tested regent attains to domination. From the stand-point of heathen antiquity, which knows of no right of the person over against the state, but concedes the absolute right of the state over the individual, this is a progress; and that which appears therein as unnatural and as a harsh one-sidedness indicates not so much the untruthfulness of the consequential progress, as rather the untruthfulness of the fundamental view common to all the Greeks.
That the spirit of
wisdom and power can be and is to be poured out upon all flesh [ Rep., 459 sqq., 546.
The essential
advance of the ethical view of Plato beyond earlier theories consists
in this, that he emancipated the idea of the good from all dependence
oil the individual pleasure-feeling, that he conceived it as unconditionally
valid and lying in God himself, and that consequently he regarded
morality as God-likeness, as an image of God in man, and hence as a
phase of the spiritual life constituting an essential part of rationality
itself, and that in consequence thereof he conceived morality as a
per
se perfectly unitary life, and reduced the plurality of moral forms
of action to
The gain accruing to moral knowledge through the labors of Plato is not to be lightly estimated. Light and order are given to the previously dark and confused mass. There is henceforth no more question of merely isolated and not deeper-grounded moral rules, but morality has acquired a firmer basis,—has come here for the first to serious self-examination. In fact, Plato occupies himself so predominantly with the foundation-]laying thoughts that he does not reach the task of carrying out a special doctrine of virtue or duty. In these ground-thoughts there are, in so far as is possible from a heathen stand-point, some approximations to a Christianly-moral consciousness; and they would have been more marked still, had the philosopher only succeeded in severing the chain which still held the already floating ship fast anchored to the soil of naturalism, namely, by overcoming the thought of an unspiritual proto-material as offering a hinderance to the personal God,—in a word, had he succeeded in changing the μη ὀν which lies at the basis of the real world, into an οὐκ ὀν. But neither Plato nor the heathen spirit in general was able to do this. Even Aristotle was able only silently to vail the, also to him, troublesome thought of dualism, but not scientifically to master it. But wherever the rational spirit is not absolutely the ground and life of every thing, there also the full idea of morality is not possible; for only the thought of the complete mastery of the spirit over every thing unspiritual, and the confidence of untrammeled liberty, assure to morality foundation-ground and courage.
Though in the recognition of the limits of freedom there
lies an approximation to the Christian thought of the natural depravity
In the idea of the state there lies indeed the presentiment, that-morality,
in its true character, is not a merely individual quality, but, on the
contrary, has an historical significancy and task, but Plato does not
rise beyond the mere presentiment; and when he is on the very point
of passing beyond the limits of a merely individual morality, and into
the sphere of an historical one, he hesitatingly checks his step and turns back. His State forms no link in history, and has no history
as its goal. As it is not sprung of history, but only of the ingenious
intellect of a theoretical philosopher, so it is designed to be nothing
other than the platform upon which the geniality of the individual personality
of the philosophic regent may find scope for itself. Neither people
nor ruler are to be the representatives of an historical idea; on the
contrary, the people is only the passive material for the formative
hand of the state-artist, and the ruler only the executor of a philosophic
theory. The state itself is to be only an individual organism along-side
of many other state-organisms, likewise ruled by individual geniality.
Hence it must also be only very small; even a thousand citizens suffice.
The thought of regarding the state as a vital member in an historical
collective organism, lies very far from Plato. Hence, though his state
is a moral organic system, yet it has no, world-historical character;
it has neither behind it an historical presupposition, nor before itself
an historical goal. That humanity
Rep., p. 373, 469
seq.
Most manifestly appears the weakness of Platonic
ethics in its relation to the religious consciousness. The beautiful
conception of the God-likeness of the moral man, Plato is not able to
carry out; the founding of the moral upon the divine will is foreign
to him, and must have been so, for the Greek knows nothing of a revelation
of this will, and the philosopher could not invent one; he was only
able to refer to the rational consciousness of man himself; but to raise
this consciousness to a universally-extant and valid one Plato did not
venture to hope, and hence he placed simply the authority and even the
strong dictatorial power of the philosophers, in the stead of the authority
of a divine revelation. Also his profoundly-conceived God-idea, which
far surpassed all previous results of heathenism, Plato did not venture
to carry out in its entire ethical significancy, and to make it consequentially
the basis of the moral. It is true he is far removed from the folly
of certain modern theories, which present morality as entirely independent
of piety; he in fact makes piety a very essential element of all moral
life, and derives even from the idea of a divine judgment after death,
a very potent motive for morality; Gorg., p. 523 sqq. Rep., p. 377
sqq., 386 sqq., 598 sqq., 605.
The completer of the Platonic philosophy, and of Greek philosophy in general, namely, Aristotle, who in many respects passed independently beyond Plato, and who was less idealistic than he, and more devoted to the study of sober reality, presented ethics for the first time as a special systematically carried-out science,—in connection with Physics on the one hand, and with Politics on the other. The greatest possible repression of the dualism of the primitive elements of existence, as still yet admitted by Plato, leads Aristotle not to a deriving of the moral idea from his more fully developed God-idea, but to a still more confident grounding of the same in the rational self-consciousness, which appears here less clogged than in Plato. A sound psychology affords for ethics a scientifically firm basis, but the repression of the Platonic antithesis of the ideal and of reality gives it a morally feebler character.
Of the three different presentations of Aristotelian ethics, only the
Ethica Nicomacheia (that is, ad Nicomachum) is, in the eyes of the
trustworthy results of criticism, Spengel, in his Abhandl. d. Kgl. Baierschen
Akad., philos.-philol. Klasse, 1841, iii, 2; 1846, p. 171 sqq. Brandis:
Aristoteles, 1851, i, p. 111 sqq.; ii, p. 1555 sqq.
Aristotle gives
to ethics its name—which it has ever since borne—and a scientific form
which served as a model for the entire Christian Middle Ages. His comprehensive
Ethica, consisting of ten books, contains indeed many excellent thoughts,
and, above all, gives evidence of a close observation of reality, and
in this respect is by far more sober and less idealistic than Plato;
as a system, however, it is still very defective, and contains chasms
on very essential points. Only relatively few general thoughts are really
scientifically developed; by far the larger part is treated rather empirically
and aphoristically; Aristotle expressly renounces all attempts at scientific
strictness of demonstration and development, for the reason that, in
his view, the subject does not admit of this, but only of probability.
Hence the form of presentation—in direct contrast to Plato's uniformly spirited
and either scientifically or poetically inspired style,—sinks not unfrequently
to dry common-sense observations, and lingers for the most part entirely within
the sphere of the popular grasp. Compare Biese: Philos. des Arist., 1838 sqq., 2 vols.,—a studious presentation,
though not sufficiently digested philosophically. Brandis: Arist., 2
Abth., 1857 (especially pp. 1335-1682); profound but too detailed. Trendelenburg:
Histr. Bietr. z. Phil., ii, 1855, p. 352 sqq.
Aristotle
does not rise to the full idea of the absolute God—an idea which is
attained to only in the thought of creation—but he halts immediately
before reaching it; he pushes, however, still further into the back-ground
the primitive antithesis between God and the not truly real proto-material
of things, which was already very much enfeebled in Plato, without,
however, entirely overcoming it. He is loth to admit a primitive
Hence in Aristotle morality is entirely rooted
in the soil of the subject; it appears less as the holy will of God
to man, than as the absolutely normal essence of the spiritual life,
as called-for by the rational human spirit itself. While there was in
Plato at least the foreshadowing of the truth, that the goal of the
moral striving lies in God-likeness and in the pleasure of God in man,
and hence bears an objective character, in Aristotle the subjective
character comes decidedly into the fore-ground, namely, in the thought
that this goal is the personal well-being of the moral subject. In Plato
the highest and truest is and remains an object of the yon-side, an
absolutely ideal somewhat
The psychological examination of the presuppositions
of ethics, is much more largely and deeply carried out by Aristotle
than by Plato, and constitutes the bright point in his philosophy; but
that his ethics has, in fact, predominantly only a psychological character,
and is rooted neither in religion nor in history, is its weak side.
While Plato makes at least an effort to give to morality an ideal character
transcending reality, the ethics of Aristotle rather confines itself
with unquestioning satisfaction to the sphere of the reality of man,
without even raising the query, whether this reality is in a state of
normal purity, or on the contrary of deterioration; and it is characteristic
of their respective views of the moral, that the thought of personal
immortality which stands forth so prominently in Plato, and which gives
to the moral striving its proper tone and consecration, retires in Aristotle
into a very dubious back-ground. In fact, he directly declares it as
absurd (ἀτοπον) to affirm, that no one is happy until after he has
died (Eth. Nic., i, c. 11, 13); he knows only of a morality of the this-side.
And he expressly
All striving has a goal, and this goal is for the rational striving a good, and hence the highest goal is the highest good; and this highest good is a perfect felt well-being, which is not a merely passive state, but a perfect active life of the rational spirit; and hence it consists essentially in virtue, which in its turn includes per se in itself the feeling of happiness.—Virtue itself is either thought-virtue or ethical virtue, according as it relates to reason or to sensuousness. Thought-virtue is acquired by learning, ethical virtue by practice. As the good consists in harmony, and hence in a proper measure, hence the non-good consists in a too-much or a too-little. Hence virtue is always the observance of the proper mean between two unvirtues. The presupposition of all moral action is the perfect freedom of the will, a doctrine to which Aristotle,—in opposition to the view of Socrates that the knowledge of the right necessarily leads to its practice,—holds distinctly fast.
The rational spirit is not
a reposing or merely passively moved entity, but an activity. The thinking
spirit is at the same time a volitionating, an acting, and a working
spirit. All volitionating aims at something as an end, namely, in all
cases, that which appears to him, who volitionates, as a good. Hence
the good (το ἀγαθον) is primarily that whereon the striving is directed
in view to its attainment. Now there are many and different ends and
goods, whereof some are related to others merely as co-adjutant, as
means to higher ends and goods. But if the striving is a rational one,
that is, a sure and consistent one, then there must be a last end,
a highest good, which is not a mere
Well-being as a purely human good is not mere life,
for life exists also with plants and animals, nor yet the mere sentient
life, for this exists also with animals; but it is the rationally-active
life, and hence the perfectly active life of the rational spirit,—is
not mere being and determinatedness, but a self-determining, an ἐνέργεια,—is
not merely a good, but works the good on and on (Nic., i, 6, 7). This
implies of itself that the highest good, well-being, is not outside
of or merely subsequent
But wherein now consists virtue,
and hence the most essential element of well-being? In man there is
a two-phased life, sensuousness and reason, which are often in conflict
with each other. Sensuousness, in so far as it is not purely vegetative,
namely, the nutritive activity of the physical life, but sensuous desire,
may be and should be governed by the reason. Virtue assumes
Comp. Trendelenburg: Histor. Beitr., i, pp. 95, 174.
It is very manifest that this merely quantitative distinguishing
of good and evil does not touch the essence of morality at all, and
in its practical application undermines all certainty of the moral judgment,
which is thereby transferred from the sphere of the conscience into
that of the calculating understanding. In this view evil’ is not qualitatively,
that is, essentially, different from the good, but it differs only in
number and degree; hence there is between the two no radical antithesis,
but only a gradual transition; in fact the transition from one vice
Morality presupposes the freedom of the will;
only that which takes place from free self-determination is morally
imputed to a man, is praised or blamed. Virtue belongs exclusively to
the
In carrying out his system into details Aristotle treats first the ethical virtues, and as their chief representatives: courage, temperateness, liberality, magnanimity (from which the love of honor is, as of a lower quality, to be distinguished), the proper control of temper, and, as predominantly social virtues: amiability, truthfulness, readiness in good-natured wit, shame, but especially justness and, as closely-related therewith, fairness or equity. As intellectual or thought-virtues are examined, more largely, prudence and wisdom; and their significancy is more closely defined than in Socrates and Plato. As considered under another phase, namely, in respect to the degree of the moral power virtualizing itself in the doing of the good, the moral character is distinguished, into virtuousness in the narrower sense, into temperateness, and into heroic or divine virtue.
The carrying-out
of the ethical matter proper, though rich in suggestive thoughts and
observations, is devoid of a general scientific development from one
central principle; nor do we find as yet any strict organic classification.
The Platonic division of the virtues (§ 14), though made the basis,
is neither strictly observed nor further developed. Differing from Plato,
Aristotle does not first discuss wisdom as the root of all the other
virtues, but, on the contrary, manliness or courage (ἀνδρία) which stands
mid-way between fool-hardy daring and cowardice.
Without any strict logical connection, Aristotle now
passes
The most important social virtue, the one which in fact includes all the others in so far as they relate to our conduct toward others, is justness, which consists in respecting the laws of the State and the rights of others, so that every man is treated as he deserves and as he has a right to claim. In a narrower sense justness relates only to the “mine” and the “thine,” to property and earnings. The principle of the just mean is here of difficult application, as there is manifestly no immoral form of conduct which can contain too great an observance of the rights of others (Nic. v, 1-14.)
Related to justness, and belonging thereto in the wider sense of the word, is the subordinate virtue of equitableness or fairness. It accomplishes—in contrast to the rigid observance of the letter of the civil law—true justness outside of the requirements of the law, which can in fact only express the general, and cannot apply to every individual case; hence it is an improving and perfecting of the law, in that in the interest of justness one does not in certain cases insist on a right which the outward law concedes (Nic., v, 15). Against his own self man cannot, properly speaking, do injustice; even suicide, as being voluntary, is not an injustice to one’s self, but only to the State.
In respect to the intellectual or thought-virtues, of which only prudence and wisdom are more especially treated (Nic., vi, 1-13), the thought of the middle-way is of course no longer applicable; they do not themselves observe the just mean, rather is it they themselves that discover it. Prudence or sensibleness (φρόνησις, more than prudence as the word is usually taken, but also not synonymous with reasonableness, as Brandis would have it) is the spiritual facility of making in each particular case suitable practical decisions in regard to what is good or evil for the actor. Wisdom (σοφία) is of a higher character, and given to prudence its right basis. It is the proper knowledge of the ultimate grounds of true knowledge, and the deriving of the same from these grounds, and hence refers to the immutable, whereas prudence has to do with the mutable and transitory; wisdom relates to the universally valid; prudence, to that which is befitting for the individual; and hence prudence is the specific practical application of wisdom, which latter expresses rather the moral idea per se. Hence prudence or sensibleness is the applying of moral wisdom in the ethical virtues. Wisdom and prudence do not constitute the whole of virtue itself, as Socrates affirms, but they are, as ὀρθός λογός, the necessary presupposition of all the other virtues.
Aristotle passes now to another manner of considering the moral
bearing, namely, not, as thus far, in reference to its material quality,
but in reference to the degree of moral energy therein virtualized.
Over against the threefold gradation of the immoral that is to be distinguished
in this respect,
After an extended consideration of friendship as a special field
of the moral activity, Aristotle concludes with an extensive
The idea, already so strongly emphasized by Plato, of a
moral community-life, is developed by Aristotle further still, and more
judiciously, without his being able, however, fully to divest it of
the one-sidedness of the general Graeco-heathen world-view. The idea
of humanity as a moral whole is entirely wanting to him also; individual
morality has absolute, predominance. The family is indeed somewhat more
highly conceived of than in Plato, because the reality of life is more
impartially observed, but yet it is not recognized as the basis of the
moral whole, but only as a subordinate manifestation-form of morality
as bearing upon the moral community-life. Wedlock-love and family-love
in general is only a special form of friendship as expressive of individual
morality. Friendship, however, is not so much a duty as an expression
of the striving after individual well-being,—bears not an objective
but a subjective character.—But also friendship forms neither the basis nor the transition to a moral community-life; the community-life,
on the
To the examination of friendship Aristotle
devotes two entire books of his Ethics, in great detail. Friendship
is indeed virtue, but not a special virtue along-side of the others;
it is rather a special manifestation-form of virtue in general. Its
definition is more comprehensive than is usual in modern times, and
includes in itself love in general, but it is by no means identical
with the Christian idea of love; it has not an objective and general,
but only a subjective and individual significancy; it loves not for
the sake of the loved one, but for the happiness of the lover,—seeks
primarily not the weal of the other, but its own, loves not man as man,
but only this or that person according to individual election, to the
exclusion of others. The idea of general love to man, as a duty, is
to Aristotle also as well as to the Greek in general, utterly foreign.
The highest attainment consists in true friendship to one or to a few
chosen ones. Toward the rest of mankind there is shown only a very feeble
and luke-warm good-will, a justness and fairness which respect essentially
only particular rights,—humaneness in the usual sense of the word.
Aristotle connects the examination of friendship directly and expressly
with that of pleasure, and places it before the more particular development
of the latter, and considers it also under such a phase as that it appears
not so much as duty as rather as a virtualization of the striving after
happiness. Friendship seeks indeed also the weal of the other, but first
of all it seeks reciprocal love, and can exist only where it finds this;
nevertheless, that friendship which loves only for the sake of the pleasure
and the benefit, is not the true and lasting love, but only that which
exists between those who are good and resemblant in virtue, inasmuch
as here the per se lasting good and the person himself are loved; in
the friend I love, at the same time, that which
Of wedlock and of sexual love, Aristotle
speaks on the whole only incidentally and very inadequately. Wedlock
is the most natural of all friendships, and has for its end not merely
the generation of children, but also the aiding and complementing of
each other in all the relations of life (Nic., viii, 14; comp. Oecon.,
i, 3). The husband, as the stronger, has the duty of protecting the
wife and remaining faithful to her (Oecon., i, 4), and the right to
rule over her,—not absolutely, however, but only in the sphere belonging
to him (Nic., viii, 12). Children stand to their parents in a permanent
debt-relation,—cannot divest themselves of their obligation to them,
though the father may cast off his son (Nic., vii, 16). The obligation
of children to fulfill the will of the parents is not, however, unlimited,
because other obligations may modify it; the chief duty of children
is to show reverence
In his further discussion of friendship Aristotle makes many ingenious observations. Those to whom one has shown benefits, one is accustomed to love more than those from whom one has received benefits, because every one esteems especially highly that which himself has done, whereas he feels the debt-relation as in some sense disagreeable (Nic., ix, 7). It is true, Aristotle does not exactly praise this feeling, but he finds it very natural, and has for it no blame. The truly good man loves himself perfectly, but this legitimate self-love is not an enjoyment-seeking selfishness, for he loves in himself only the better part, and he promotes his own weal, in that he loves and works the good; and even when he makes sacrifices for others, he wins for himself the higher good (Nic., ix, 9).
In conceiving of the essence of the family as a mere friendship, it is natural that Aristotle should not make it the basis of the wider community-life, the State, but that he should place it rather in the sphere of individual morality, and that he should make the transition to the discussion of the state, neither from friendship nor from the family, but rather derive the thought of the state immediately from the general thought of morality, and transfer all the moral significancy of the family to the thus self-based state. This transition Aristotle makes thus: the teaching of virtue suffices not for the great multitude to induce them to virtue, seeing that they are guided almost exclusively by fear and not by knowledge. The multitude must be trained to virtue and constantly guided, and hence stand in need of laws; the training of a father suffices not for this, because it lacks the necessary authority and coercive power; only the rationally-governed state has both of these, and is hence the necessary condition of a more general realization of morality (Nic., x, 10).
Aristotle
is too judicious an observer of reality, idealistically to expect all
salvation from mere instruction, and not to admit the moral unimpressibility
of the great multitude; he speaks thereof in the strongest expressions;
“the great multitude obeys force rather than reason, and punishment
rather than morality;” “the majority abstain from evil not because
Aristotle recognizes thus the necessity of a moral community-life,
which, as upheld by the pre-eminent moral spirit of the few specially-endowed
individuals, furnishes, itself, the basis of the morality of individuals
in general, and develops, and guides, and keeps it in bounds. This is
a weighty thought far transcending the shallowness of modern rationalistic
liberalism, which recognizes no other objective form of the moral community-life,
than that which has grown up on the broad basis of the morality of the
great multitude,—a merely abstract product without any power and effectiveness
of its own. Aristotle regards it as absurd to base a moral community-life
upon the disposition and the spiritual sovereignty of the masses; he
calls for the sovereignty of the spiritual and moral heroes,—the exclusive
authority of the most highly gifted personalities; but he is, as yet,
too deeply
The State is related to the individual
citizens of the state and to the smaller social organisms—the household-life
and the local community—as the absolutely determining and enlivening
whole to the members,—is not so much the product as rather the ground
of all morality. The threefold gradation of dependence in the household-life,
and above all, the relation of master and slave, as resting upon a primitive nature-destination,
is the presupposition of the state. Placing a higher worth upon the natural
social relations than Plato, and confining himself more fully to historical
Of the Politics of Aristotle we have to do only with the more strictly ethical contents. He does not connect this work directly with his Ethics, but treats of its subject-matter from a more practical stand-point; hence he gives, on the one hand, in his Ethics, the more general thoughts of the doctrine of the state, and, on the other, he repeats in his Politics some of the thoughts of his Ethics.
The state is the highest moral communion,
and hence realizes the highest of all goods. Its type is the household-life;
its task is not merely to afford protection and help for the life of
the individuals, but essentially to found and promote the true life,
that is, the spiritually moral life, of the whole. The state is not
itself the product of the already developed moral life of the individuals,
but it is the presupposition thereof; outside of the state there is
no moral development; only he who belongs to the state can be moral;
the whole is antecedent to the parts, and the rational man is a part
of the state; the state is the first, the citizen of the state the second;
outside of the state lives only the animal or God (Pol., i, 1, 2).
Hence the moral relation of the household-life is a presupposition of
the state only in so far as it is a constituent element of the same,
but not in such a sense as to imply that it already existed before the
state and independently of the same.
The opinion that
slavery is not a something entirely natural, but is based only upon
violence and arbitrary laws, Aristotle emphatically rejects. A household-life
without possessions and without serving instruments is not conceivable,
and hence also not without slaves, which are in fact living instruments
and possessions. Even as the artist and artisan stand in need of instruments,
so the housefather, of slaves, which are consequently absolutely his
property, and subject to his discretion; this is a natural, and not
a merely legal relation, strictly analogous to the relation of soul
and body,—the former as the absolutely dominating, the latter as the
absolutely dominated factor. And reality corresponds to the want. Men
differ in fact from each other in such a manner that the ones, as being
really rational, possess themselves, and represent the soul of humanity,
whereas the others represent the body of humanity,—are corporeally
strong, and adapted for bodily toil, but are spiritually unfree and
ignoble, and, though distinguished by reason from the brute, are yet
not governed by reason but by sensuous desires. These are destined by
nature to be slaves, and it is well for them that, as the property of
others, they are spiritually dominated (Pol., i, 3-5). And Aristotle
expressly says that those who are destined by nature to slavery are
the non-Greeks, the barbarians. Greek prisoners-of-war are slaves not
indeed by nature, but by law, and hence legitimately.—What the significance
of slavery is, appears clear from the fact that it is a characteristic
of a slave that he may be injured with impunity (Nic., v, 8),—that the
notion of justness holds good only between such persons as have rights,
and hence not between master and slave; that the legitimate and uncensurable
manner of ruling over slaves is the tyrannical, the end of which is
simply the profit of the master (Nic., viii, 12; Pol.,
Aristotle subjects the Platonic state to a very keen and sound criticism;
the community of goods and of wives he rejects, as both unnatural and
morally corrupting, and even impossible (Oecon., ii, 2 sqq.). Of his
own views Aristotle is more reticent than Plato, and he gives rather
merely general thoughts than specific details. Only that one should
take active part in political life who possesses all civic virtue, and
especially far-seeing insight; but such virtue can exist only where
there is leisure for its development, that is, in such persons as are
free from the necessity of laboring for the common wants of life,—and
hence not in day-laborers, artisans, or farmers (Oecon., iii, 5; vii,
9). The soil must be cultivated by slaves. Leisure stands higher than
labor, and is indeed per se happiness. A proper state-constitution must
have for its end the weal of all the free citizens constituting the
state; it may be equally well monarchic, or aristocratic, or republican
(the latter being that wherein all the truly free citizens take part),
and over against these stand as their perversions: tyranny, oligarchy,
and democracy, all of which look to the good, not of the whole, but
only of individual persons, or of classes in society (Oecon., iii, 6-8;
iv, 1 sqq.). It is best for the State when the best citizens bear rule;
and the best one is not to be bound by trammeling laws, but stands free
above the law, although in general Aristotle places the validity of
the law higher than Plato, and is not hopeful of finding such “best” ones very frequently. The mass of
The state provides for the public worship and for the moral culture of the citizens; hence it prescribes, in order to the obtaining of a vigorous population, the institution of marriage. Maidens are to marry at their eighteenth year, and men at about the age of thirty-seven, in order that the children may stand in a proper relation to the age of the parents, and in order that the differing duration of the productive period of the two sexes may stand in some degree of harmony, and the children be robust. The laws are to prescribe the manner of life of the woman while pregnant, and the physical and spiritual training of the children. In relation to the exposing of children, the maxim holds good, “that no physically imperfect (πεπηρωμένον) child is to be raised.” Where, however, the traditional usages forbid the exposing of children, there the excessive increase of the population is to be prevented by forbidding the procreating of more than a legally fixed number, and the fetus is to be destroyed before the period of sensation and quickening (Oecon., vii, 15, 16). The education of the children stands, as a matter of high importance, under the care of the state; overseeing this education up to the seventh year, the state then actually undertakes it itself; for the citizens belong not to themselves, but to the state. The boys—and the question is only as to these—are to be instructed in grammar and drawing, because of the utility of these sciences, and in gymnastics in order to the development of courage, and in music in order to the employment of the leisure which becomes the free citizen (labor being confined to the slave), and in order to the awakening of the sense for harmony (Oecon., viii, 3-7).
Though Aristotle
presents numerous forms of state-constitution as possible, and as good
and appropriate according to existing circumstances, yet to the state
of true human freedom he is not capable of rising. Even his most free
and most democratic constitution rests absolutely on the basis of
As in relation to those within the Greek state,
so also in relation to the non-Greeks, is the thought of humanity, in
Aristotle, radically defective. The non-Greeks belong only in a very
loose sense to humanity at all,—are really but half-men, destined by
nature to be dominated over by the Greeks, as born for ruling. War upon
them is treated of by Aristotle, unhesitatingly, under the head of the
legitimate occupations of life, and more specifically under that of
the chase: “War is, in its very nature, a branch of industry; for the
chase is a form of the industrial activity, which comes to application
as well in relation to wild beasts, as also in relation to those men
who are destined by nature to be ruled over (πεφυκότες ἀρχεσθαι) but
are not willing thereto,—so that consequently such a war is a just one
” (Oecon., i, 8). War is regarded by no means as an evil, but as a normal
life-manifestation of the nations, as a necessary condition of the virtualizing
of one of the most essential of the virtues. The relation of the moral
community-life to the rest of mankind is consequently in no sense one
which looks to the realizing of a moral communion, but is a purely negating
and destructive one. Ethics proclaims not peace but war,—aims not at
emancipating and redeeming, but at subjugating; non-Greek humanity is
not
The form of Grecian and heathen ethics which attained in Aristotle to its highest perfection, is that of the natural man as contented in and with himself; it lacks the consciousness of the historical reality and of the historical development of sin,—of the antagonism of the reality of natural man, as sprung from an historical act, to the moral idea, and of the earnestness of the moral struggle against sin; instead thereof we find the introduction of a proud distinction between a multitude incapable by nature of true morality, and an elect minority of free-born men capable of all wisdom and virtue, and among the latter a lofty virtue-pride of man as having attained without severe inner struggle to an easily-won self-satisfaction. Humility is not a virtue of a free sage, but only of the slave and plebeian, as born unto serving obedience.—Morality rests only upon the knowledge (independent of the religious consciousness) of the per se good, but not upon love,—neither upon love to God nor upon love to man; love is not the ground, but only a co-ordinate manifestation-form of virtue. Hence also the solely true moral community-life is only a product of wise and rational calculation, but not of love; and the primitive community-life of moral love, namely, the family, is not the basis, but only one phase of the state-life. The moral view of Aristotle, and indeed of the Greeks in general, is consequently not merely manifoldly different from the Christian view, but indeed radically opposed thereto.
It is very important clearly to realize this inner antithesis of Aristotelian and Christian ethics, and all the more so as Aristotle has had, even up to the latest times, a so great and so largely bewildering influence upon the shaping of Christian ethics. Though not wishing to undervalue the high scientific significancy of the Aristotelian system, we are yet not at liberty to find in it thoughts which are really foreign to it.
The Christian consciousness
rests entirely upon the recognition of the general necessity of redemption,
and indeed not simply in reference to a moral defectiveness inborn in
man, but to one that has fallen to all men through historical guilt.
Of this Aristotle knows nothing. When Brandis says: “The doctrine of
hereditary sin would not have seemed foreign to him,” inasmuch as he
saw very clearly the corruption of human nature, Arist., ii, p. 1682. Polit., iii, 13: κατὰ δὲ τοιούτων οὐκ ἔστι
νόμος, αὐτοὶ γάρ εἰσι νόμος
To what height
the proud self-consciousness of the philosopher, as pretendedly perfect
in his virtue, rises, some idea may be obtained from the following
description of the virtue of magnanimity: “Magnanimous is he, who,
being worthy of great things, esteems himself as in fact worthy of them. . . .
The greatest of out. ward goods is honor; hence the magnanimous man
has to act with propriety in respect to honor and dishonor. . . . As the
magnanimous man is worthy of the greatest things, he must necessarily
be a perfectly good one; to him belong whatever is great in every virtue; . . .
hence it is difficult to be really magnanimous. . . . In great honors,
and honors shown him by eminent men, the magnanimous man rejoices moderately,
as at that which he deserves, or which even falls below his desert;
for, for a perfect virtue there is no entirely sufficient honor. Nevertheless
he accepts it, because there is no greater one for him. But the honor
shown him by ordinary men, or for inferior things, he disdains, for
they are not worthy of him.” After having observed, that in order to
true magnanimity also outward gifts of fortune are requisite, and
that the magnanimous man thinks only very lightly of men and things,
and regards only few things so highly as to expose himself to danger
for them, Aristotle says of him further: “He is inclined to do good,
but disdains to receive benefits, for the former is characteristic of
the eminent, and the latter, of the
A very essential defect of Aristotelian ethics is the falling into the
back-ground of the religious character of the moral; and in this respect
it is far inferior to that of Plato. The moral stands out alone in entire
self-sufficiency, not needing any other ground or basis than itself;
the good is good without reference to God,—is good in and of itself,
and is at the same time the motive of its own realization. That the
moral is essentially God’s will, that it brings man into life-communion
with God, that man has an immediate moral life-relation to God, that
piety is the ground and life of all virtue,—of all this we find in Aristotle
but a few very faint and wavering hints. And this is especially surprising
in view of the fact that the world-theory of Aristotle is, in other
respects, by no means inimical to a close connecting of the moral with
the religious, seeing that his God-idea is a very highly developed one,
and that lie derives all life of the world and of its contents absolutely
from the proto-causality of the highest self-conscious reason, that
is, the personal God. It is not so much the consequentiality of his
philosophical system, as the feebleness of the religious consciousness
Morality in Aristotle lacks therefore its essential motive; for, in that he himself expressly and repeatedly declares. against Socrates, that from the knowledge of the good the willing of the same does not necessarily follow, but, on the contrary, a contradiction may occur between willing and knowing, he thereby indeed evidently shows that he has observed real life with greater impartiality than Socrates, but he has also thereby rendered impossible any clear understanding of the moral life. For if knowledge does not invariably result in willing, what then is the impelling power which calls forth willing, or the lack of which works non-willing? It is not love, for love appears not as directed toward the good per se, or toward God as the highest good, but only toward the individual manifestation, as individual friendship,—not as a motive to virtue, but as one particular virtue along-side of many others. The willing of the good springs not from love, but appears as something entirely independent and unbased, along-side of knowledge and along-side of love; and for the very reason that Aristotle knows not the moral power of love, he can discover for the civic virtue of the great multitude no other motive than fear.
After the time of Aristotle, philosophy declined with accelerating rapidity,
degenerating more and more into a shallow popular moralizing, loosely
grouped around a few superficial foundation-thoughts, and consisting,
for the most part, simply in unconnected observations on isolated topics.
The decline of thought manifests itself in a constantly growing inappreciation
of the objective significancy and validity of the moral idea, which
latter assumes more and more an individually-subjective character, even
in cases where it seemingly subordinates the subject to
The moral theories that rise after Aristotle are in no sense vigorous and truly philosophical products of thought; they are but feeble out-shoots of the antecedent, more vigorous spirit-life, without bloom and without fruit. Moreover they stand less closely connected with Plato and Aristotle than with certain other tendencies of thought that sprang from the influence of Socrates. On the basis of the Cyrenaics sprang up Epicureanism; on that of the Cynics, Stoicism; while the last form of Greek philosophy, also in the sphere of ethics, namely, Skepticism, may be regarded as a further development of the tendency of the Sophists.
By Socrates this much was
gained, that the moral, rational subject was recognized in his freedom
and rights, that the moral idea in general had come to consciousness.
With Plato and Aristotle, however, this freedom and this idea are not
of a merely individual, subjective character, but they are brought into
relation to the living whole of rational reality. A course of action
is not good for the reason that I regard it as such, but I must regard
it as good because it is good per se; the moral has essentially a general
and objective validity. The later philosophy holds one-sidedly fast
to the position. gained by Socrates,—makes of the subjective consciousness
the highest criterion of truth, even in moral things, and that too in
its individual, absolutely self-dependent character, apart from any
organic union with the rational whole. The good is good because I recognize
it as such. In this subjectivistic tendency, philosophy turns away from
Aristotle and falls into the channel rather of the earlier schools,
but with a still stronger emphasizing of the subject. Hence also the
interest for general and for natural philosophy grows less, and attention
is concentrated on the subjective, on morality, and this consists now
essentially in subjective opinions; lacking in fundamental ideas, it
becomes feeble, lax, shallow; it
The doctrine of the Epicureans,—which was widespread among the mass of the cultured, and which subsequently became even the dominant spirit of the age, but which still remained without any scientific development, as, in fact, it was incapable of such,—is the consequential unfolding of the individual pleasure-principle, the theoretical expression of irreligion and immorality. The subjective pleasure-feeling is the highest criterion of truth and of the good; the yielding to natural proclivities, even the sensuous, and the greatest possible enjoyment of the present, are the highest virtue,—prudent calculating for prolonged pleasure, the highest wisdom,—anxious concern as to a future retribution and a divine world-government, the greatest folly; our striving an& thinking should regard only this life.
Epicurus, (ob. 271 B. C., see Diog. L., x, 1 sqq.), who stood most closely related with the school
of the Cyrenaics, obtained very soon for his doctrine—which has so much
to
Happiness is the highest good, and hence to strive after it the highest
wisdom and morality; all cognition looks to it as its end. For man only
that is true which he feels, which he becomes acquainted with through
the senses, namely, concrete sensuous reality. Whatever transcends this
is at least doubtful, and to fear the doubtful and supersensuous disturbs
happiness. Fear of the gods and of a life after death must vanish away,
for of them we have no knowledge. Sensuous feeling, and hence the individual
pleasure-feeling, is the highest criterion of all truth, and hence also
of the morally-true, the good.. But we feel only the sensuous, the corporeal,
hence only this is for us true and real. Individual being, and hence
multiplicity, is the solely true existence,—and hence, first of all,
the individual subject; consequently to carry out the rights of the
subject is the moral task. This task looks in no sense whatever to the
realizing of a something transcendent to the individual,—of an idea;
man is not to follow an all-prevalent law, but, on the contrary, his
individual nature,—is not, in any sense whatever, to deny himself,
but in fact to cling to and assert this his particular existence, such
as it is. Alan is not an upholder of a spiritual world, on the contrary,
he is himself absolutely supported and guided by nature,—should merge
himself harmoniously into nature, should therein feel himself well.
This feeling of one’s self-well is the chief end of life, and therefore
the solely true measure of the good. Enjoyment
Now, for this manner of life there was of course no great degree of wisdom requisite; nevertheless direct unconscious desire may lead astray, and hence it must be guided by considerateness. Man must consider in each separate case whether an immediately inviting pleasure is not connected with a subsequent greater pain, and in this case he must avoid it, or at least confine it within the necessary limits, and that simply in order to render the pleasure-feeling a lasting one. The pleasure of the soul is greater than that of the body, because it is more lasting, and hence it is more to be sought after; however, the difference is not essential, inasmuch as the soul itself is but a refined body. Higher than the pleasure which consists in the present gratifying of a natural impulse, is the pleasure of being satisfied, that is, when desire and the soul are in a state of comfortable repose; for this reason a certain degree of temperateness and moderation are among the conditions of happiness. Hence virtue is indeed an element of a wise life, not for its own sake, however, but as a means to a higher pleasure-enjoyment,—even as one takes medicine as a means to health. Right and wrong, to which the virtue of justness relates, are nothing per se; right is only the contents of mutual compacts that are entered into for reciprocal benefit; their violation is the wrong. Where there are no compacts there is neither right nor wrong, and hence also no justness or righteousness. Moreover, only so far as it redounds to my utility, have I to practice justness; and the evil of unjustness is simply the damage I incur,—especially through judicial infliction. Friendship is of much value, wedlock-love properly of none at all. From offices of state the wise man keeps himself aloof; he acquires for himself wealth as far as practicable, and thus provides for his future.
An essential condition of happiness is the being free
from all fear of spiritual powers—of the gods and their displeasure,
of death and a retribution in the “yon-side.” Gods there may indeed
be, but as they are to be conceived of as in a state of bliss, hence
they cannot possibly have any concern for the world and for men. Death
does not fall within the
The subjectively-idealistic Stoicism
which took its start from Zeno, teaches a morality of conflict,—of struggle
on the part of the rational spirit (as being alone of worth, and as
being absolutely a law unto itself) against sensuousness, of thought
against pleasure, as belonging to a lower sphere. Virtue is the solely true good, and all other seeming goods are either indifferent or irrational.
But this struggle rests simply on the thought of an unreconciled and
irreconcilable antagonism of existence,—knows not the higher
Stoicism stands
on the one hand incomparably higher in spiritual vigor and dignity
than Epicureanism, and forms a direct antagonism thereto, but, on the
other hand, it passes far beyond the truth in the direction of the opposite
extreme, and its one-sided unnaturalness manifests even more clearly
than Epicureanism the insufficiency of heathen principles for arriving
at true moral wisdom.—Zeno, a contemporary of Epicurus, illustrated
the teachings of his system (see Diog. Laert. viii) by moral strictness
of life, and by the commission of suicide at an advanced age; his writings
are lost. His school, which collected within itself the nobler class
of minds, and which, while less numerous than that of the Epicureans,
yet exhibited far more spiritual activity than the latter, continued
to exist until the downfall of paganism,—especially among the Romans,
where, though much toned-down and transformed, it was represented not
only by the rather eclectic Cicero, but also by Seneca, From him are extant numerous moral writings in popular rhetorical
style. His lectures,
for the most part merely popular moral exhortations, are preserved in Arrian; besides these we have the
Enchiridion Epicteti, Which has been
much used even in Christian times. From him we have Τὰ εἰς ἐαυτὸν,
(moral meditations)—disconnected, and, in many cases, merely suggested
thoughts and life rules, with much repetition and without regular development.
On the dualistic antithesis
of matter and spirit rests the corresponding ethical antithesis between
merely sensuously-natural objective existence and the rational spirit
in the individual free subject. Not the mere nature-entity, but the
spirit, is the true entity, and it is such in full, freely self-legislating
self-sufficiency; its destination is to manifest itself as independent
in relation to nature, and to base itself entirely upon itself. Not
the passive, but the active entity is the solely true one,—not enjoyment
but activity; it is only as active that the spirit is in its true reality,
whereas, as merely enjoying, it sinks below spirituality. Man, as related
to objective existence, is a self-poised absolutely freely self-determining
being,—is, as a rational spirit, perfectly self-sufficient, needs nothing
outside of himself in order to be a spirit, to be free, to be happy;
he should not let himself be determined by any thing whatever external
to himself. Whatever is to have worth for man, and hence is to form
a part of, and to contribute to, his perfection and happiness, must
proceed from and depend upon himself alone; every thing else, whatever
it may be, concerns him not, is indifferent to him,—can, and may, neither
hinder nor promote his perfection and happiness. It is in being self-dependent
that the wise man is truly free.—The essence of man, in distinction from
the brute, is not enjoying and feeling, but thinking; it is not in enjoying,
but in thinking, that he is free, that he is a rational spirit; and
the more he seeks to enjoy external objects and finds pleasure therein,
so much the more is he dependent and unfree, so much the more is he
irrational,. and hence so much the less a true man. Thinking and not
feeling is, therefore, the decisive criterion of the truth and of the
good; hence there should be first judging and then acting. All rational,
and hence moral, activity must rest on knowledge; to act
The essence and the fundamental thought of the good is conformity to nature (ὁμολογία, convenientia, τὸ κατὰ φύσιν, convenienter naturae vivere). Nature is taken here, not as outer sensuous nature in contradistinction to the self-conscious spirit, but as the general order of the world, as the natura rerum, the inner conformity-to-law of the All, and, above all, the rational nature and conformity-to-law of one’s own spiritual existence and life. Hence conformity to nature is agreement with one’s self—the inner order and spiritual health of the life. Even the brute puts forth effort primarily not from pleasure and for pleasure, but for natural self-preservation and self-development. The true nature of man, however, is not the sensuous nature but the reason. To live right signifies, therefore, to live according to reason. Hence evil is a contradiction to the rational nature of man, and the direct opposite of the good,—differs from the good not merely quantitatively, but also qualitatively and essentially,—is the anti-natural and anti-rational.
Virtue is, therefore, in its very essence, a “being well;” hence it has a feeling of happiness as its immediate and necessary consequence, and thus it is itself per se the highest good. He who is truly virtuous is happy in the same manner as God; he who is vicious is necessarily wretched. Not this happiness-feeling, however, but the good as such, is the rational end of the moral activity; virtue is to be sought for its own sake without reference to the happiless-feeling; the pleasure-sensation is indeed the consequence, but not the end of moral action. There are, in fact, other pleasure-sensations than those which flow from virtue, and other pain-sensations than those which follow from vice; also external things, things not dependent on us and our free determination, such as health, riches, etc., may excite pleasure-sensations, and hence contribute to our external happiness. Now, if the end of our striving were not the good per se, but happiness, then our effort would be directed toward a something that is not fully within our power; but nothing can be truly good, and hence truly to be sought after, which is not dependent upon us and within the scope of our will. The pleasure which arises independently of us from external things may be agreeable, and hence these things may be useful, but real goods they are not. Hence the antithesis of the honestum (τὸ καθῆκον, τὸ καλόν) and the utile. Thus the happiness and perfection of the sage rests entirely upon himself; he is the free creator of his well-being; all that is really good depends solely upon himself; all that is not dependent upon him affects and disturbs him not. Every wise man is a rich man, a king.—As the good differs from the evil, not in degree but in essence, hence all the virtues are essentially equal to and homogeneous with each other; for a virtue inferior to another could be possible only by its being somewhat participant in evil; but this is impossible from its very idea. Hence whoever has one virtue has them all; and they are all intimately involved in each other. Likewise, all vices are essentially equal to each other, and, e. g., to kill a cock needlessly is just as bad as to commit parricide.
From the Stoic notion of the self-based freedom of the sage, as well
as from their view of the essence of virtue, it follows that there may
be entirely perfect men, men who are
Cic.:
Pro Muraena, 29.
Zeno himself based the
moral on religion; also some of his disciples understand by the “nature” with which man is to be in harmony, the divine contents and the divine
conformity-to-law of nature, and hence that which harmonizes with the
divine will; and they conceive of reason as a manifestation of the divine
activity in things. But the later Stoics, for the most part, lost sight
of this religious character of the moral, and presented it as quite
independent of religion,—as a spiritual life-sphere resting strictly
and independently upon itself. In Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius the
religious element comes again more into the fore-ground; they recognize
reverence for the gods, or for God, as a virtue and as a ground of the
moral,—conceive of virtuousness as God-likeness, and viciousness as
godlessness, and even attribute high worth to prayer, though here, of
course, there is no trace of penitential prayer, but for the most part,
only the spirit of the Pharisee’s prayer: “God, I thank thee that I am not as other men.” Arrian: Dissert. Epict., iii, 24, 96 sqq.; iv, 10,
14 sqq., (ed. Schweigh.); M. Aurel. Ant.: εἰς ἐαυτὸν, ix, 40.
This view of the moral
produced in fact among the Stoics an earnest moral striving, though
without enthusiasm or heart, and only in the manner of a cold logical
calculating. Feeling amounts to nothing at all; of the potency of love
there is not a trace; thought passes directly over into action, and
feeling merely accompanies the act as a something entirely indifferent.
The love of neighbor is regarded only as a mode of action, but not as
an affair of the heart. The sage ought indeed to help the wretched according
to his means and according to their worthiness, but to feel compassion,
or even to act as if one felt it, would be unworthy of a wise man; for
the truly wise man is above all suffering; and the wretched suffer only
from lack of knowledge, because they regard external things, which are
not within their own control, as real goods. Epict.: Enchir., 16; M. Anton., v, 36; vii, 43;
Diog. L., vii, 123; Cicero: Pro Muraena, c. 29; Seneca: De clementia,
ii, 5, 6. Stobaeus: Eclogae ethicae, ii, 7, p. 190 (Heeren); Diog.
L., vii, 123; Cic.: Pro Mur., 29.
The morality of the Stoics is a constant contest of the spirit against
sensuous nature and against the unspiritual and irrational in the objective
world in general; but as this contest is directed against a primordial
and never entirely-overcomeable antagonism in existence itself, and
hence can never lead
The lightly esteeming of the
non-spiritual extends also to the physical life. The Stoics indeed regard
the instinct of self-preservation as a fundamental impulse of human
nature, and as a strictly normal expression of the law which requires
harmony with one’s self and with nature, but it is not inconsistent
therewith that they should regard life itself as an object of indifference—seeing
that it is not within man’s own control. Death must not be feared, but
must-as a power not within our control—be despised; and in so far as
it is a nature-law, and one that liberates us from a painful bodily
life, it is to be regarded even with pleasure. The thought of immortality
is, in this connection, regarded merely as a possibility; if the life
of the soul continues on, then the wise man is happy; but if it ceases,
then ceases for him also all pain; in neither case is there the least
ground for fear.—But
Diog. L., vii, 130; Arrian, i, 9, 20; i, 24, 20; i, 25, 18
sqq.; ii,
1, 20; M. Anton., v, 29; Cic.: De Finibus, iii, 18. Epist. ii, 5 (17);
vi, 6 (58); viii, 1 (70); De ira, iii, 15, (ed. Fickert).
Stoic morality
is of a purely individual character, aims only at virtualizing the free
self-dependence and self-sufficiency of the individual subject. For
an objective reality of the moral thought, and for a moral community-life,
the Stoic has no appreciation, and hence also none for the naturally-moral
basis of society, namely, marriage,—which, in fact, as requiring self-submission
to an objective moral reality, appears as a trammeling fetter for the
individual subject; and it is doubtless only from the striving after
the maintenance of the complete self-sufficiency of the wise subject
in the face of all objective moral reality, that are to be explained
the strangely perverted views of the sexual relations that prevailed
among the Stoics. By them marriage itself was lightly esteemed, and,
while passionate love and lustfulness were condemned, sexual communion
outside of marriage was expressly defended against all criticism; Epict.
Enchir. 33. Diog. L., vii, 13, 33, 131, 188; Sext. Emp.: Ὑποτυπώσεις, iii, 24. Stob.:
Ecl. eth., ii, 7, p. 230 (Heeren).
The morality of the Stoic is the pride of the natural man who is conscious
of being a moral creature, but who has no suspicion of a morality higher
than and transcending the individual subject, nor of a personal moral
depravity. His oft-repeated high-sounding descriptions of self-complacency
make any thing but an agreeable impression. This pride restrains him,
it is true, from many unworthy acts; in consequence, however, of his
total lack of an objective standard, it did not guard him from grave
moral errors, nor from an almost fanatical hate against a higher world-theory,
which, at a later period, offered itself to him in Christianity; and
Marcus Aurelius was not in the least deterred by his so high-sounding
discourses on kindness, tolerance, and charity, from letting loose a
fearful persecution upon the Christians,—in whose martyr-courage he
could discover only criminal obstinacy.—Though Stoic ethics was distinguished
from the essentially-related ethics of the Cynics by the fact that it
discarded the unspiritual and unrefined form of the latter, and that
it respected the spiritual under every phase, and hence also in art,
and placed a high estimate upon the worthy appearance of the body and
upon cleanliness, nevertheless at bottom it does not really transcend
Epicureanism and Stoicism are two diametrically opposed but also mutually requiring and complementing phases of the Greek spirit; both are equally one-sided, both are equally remote from the Christian ethical idea;—both refer all moral truth back to the individual subject. In the place of Christian morality, the Epicureans offer joyous voluptuousness; the Stoics offer the high-minded pride of complete self-righteousness; neither party feels the least need of redemption, of divine grace; for the Epicureans regard the per se sinful as right, while the Stoics imagine themselves to have overcome the same through their pee se pure individual will.
Epicurean ethics emphasizes the nature-phase in man; Stoic the spirit-phase;
the former teaches an unresisting, voluptuous giving-over of self to
sensuous nature, the latter an earnest but only partially successful
resisting of the same; the former is absolutely indifferent as to moral
knowledge,—natural instinct supplies the place of knowledge; the latter
manifests a busy seeking after knowledge, and esteems it as a virtue;
the former is a crude realism,—in all essential features a materialistic
naturalism; the latter is a one-sided idealism,—in all essential
The Epicurean seemingly gives sway to the universal, namely, to nature, to which the individual subordinates himself; in reality, however, the individual subject is set free from the bonds of the universal, of the spiritual, of rationality; the Stoic also seemingly subordinates the individual subject to a general thought, namely, the moral idea; in reality, however, also here the universal is made to yield to the individual subject; in the place of a general moral idea we find, strictly speaking, only the calculating opinion of the individual; it is the self-will of the subject in the face of the spiritual objective world, namely, history, that asserts itself as rational freedom. According to both systems, therefore, the truth is found only within the subject; nature and existence in general have value for the Epicurean only in so far as they can be enjoyed, that is, in so far as they are for the individual subject,—in every other respect existence is indifferent; in the eyes of the Stoic, existence is truth only in so far as it appears in the subject; the sage is the embodiment of the moral order of the universe, which, apart from him, exists but very imperfectly. In both systems the higher thought of Plato, namely, that, by the moral, the real harmony of existence, the harmony between nature and spirit, is realized, is one-sidedly perverted; the Epicurean effects this harmony only by sacrificing the rationally-personal spirit to nature, the Stoic by sacrificing nature to the individual personal spirit; it is no longer a harmonizing, but a giving up, of one of the two phases of existence.
Though Stoic ethics is in many respects
graver, and more worthy of man than Epicurean, nevertheless both systems
are equally remote from the Christian view. The Epicurean does not recognize
the spiritual personality as the highest factor; the Stoic does not
recognize the rights of objective reality; but Christianity recognizes
both as absolutely belonging to each other. In both systems, the natural
man, the individual subject, thrusts himself in his fortuitous reality
into the foreground, as having the highest claims; in both the subject
is of
The subjectivism that predominated in Epicurean and Stoic ethics finds its consequential and scientifically-rigorous carrying-out,—and at the same time Greek and heathen ethics in general, its dissolution and honorable self-destruction,—in Scepticism, which declares all judging of good and evil as futile, and all modes of action as indifferent.—Neo-Platonic philosophy, which seeks to rescue heathenism as against Christianity, and which perverts Christian ideas to heathen purposes, presents in its but partially developed ethics little more than a dreamy mysticism—a quietistic self-merging into the one universal divine essence; and it is only for non-philosophers that there is need of a, not scientific but, practical code of morals.
Roman philosophy made no original contributions to ethics. Apart from
a but slightly independent adoption of the doctrines of Stoicism, it
presents nothing more than a feebly eclectic character, and
Skepticism has often been misunderstood not only in its scientific, but also in its world-historical significancy; it arose gradually and, as it were, spontaneously, without any one specially prominent founder, as a protest of the general rational consciousness against the self-sufficiency and presumption of the previously existing philosophies,—and, in the sphere of ethics, as the scientific conscience of heathenism. Subjectivism, when consequentially carried out, leads inevitably to skepticism. Socrates had contended with moral earnestness against the subjectivism of the Sophists, and had attempted to find a solid basis also for ethical philosophy; in this commendable effort, however, he succeeded as little as did, after him, Plato and Aristotle and the Stoics. In these efforts they did not rise beyond mere formal definitions of the moral, and were obliged to derive the material contents of the same from the primarily merely fortuitously-determined essence of the individual subject. The sole thought that leads to a true basing of the moral consciousness, namely, that the moral is the will of God, was only dimly caught sight of, and could not in fact, from the heathen stand-point, be carried out with any degree of certainty. That, now, the vail was torn off from the false method of taking the finite subject as the criterion and the infallible source of universally-valid and objective truth, and of attributing to subjective opinion an absolutely valid objective significancy, and that subjectivism was exposed in all its nakedness and invalidity,—this was the scientific service of Skepticism,—which, having shown traces of itself as early as in the age of Aristotle (Pyrrho), attained to greater prevalence in the century before Christ (Ænesidemus of Alexandria), and fully developed itself in the second century after Christ (Sextus Empiricus), and thus like a devouring rust gradually undermined the last self-confidence of heathen philosophy, save in so far as it did not seek refuge. behind the mystical nebulae of Neo-Platonicism.
Skepticism is in fact simply the product of the antithesis
between Epicureanism and Stoicism. The former said: the feeling of
pleasure and displeasure alone decide as to the
Neo-Platonic ethics can hardly be regarded as a genuine phase of Greek thought proper. Entering the lists in antagonism to the new world-power of Christianity for the purpose of rescuing heathenism, mingling together into a nebulous conglomerate all the fragmentary notions of Oriental and Occidental religions and philosophies, and supplementing them with Christian thoughts, Neo-Platonic philosophy manifests also in its but crudely-formed ethics little more than the distressful features of a spirit slowly and painfully dying of the mere senility of age,—a spirit which, without considerate choice of its means, is feverishly possessed with the one desire of arousing up by artificial nerve-stimuli its already half-dead life-forces to one last desperate up-flickering into life,—a tragically-grand desperation-effort of a mortally-wounded combatant,—the titanic rebounding of the spirit of antiquity when pierced through the heart by the arrow of a higher form of truth; (Plotinus, the greater disciple of Ammonius Saccas, the founder of the school, living mostly in Rome, ob. A. D. 270; his disciple Porphyry, ob. A. D. 304; Proclus, who lived mostly at Athens, ob. A. D. 485—the last philosopher of Occidental heathenism.)
Deviating
from all previous Greek philosophy, the Neo-Platonists place the idea
of God in the fore-ground, and deduce from it, and bring in relation
to it, all principles of morality. But this God-idea itself is further
remote from the Biblical idea of God than is even that of Plato and
Aristotle. God is no longer the infinite personal Reason, but the absolutely
undetermined abstract Unity, which unfolds itself, in Pantheistic emanation,
into the world of multiplicity,—which world is consequently not a separate
reality different from God, but simply the shadow of God himself,—the
reverse-side of the divine, the fading-away of the pure divine light, and hence
of essentially
As true cognizing is not dialectical but
contemplative, namely, a spiritual beholding of God, so also true morality
is not an outward-going activity, but rather a non-acting, a restraining
of active volition, a dissolving of all particular personal volitionating
Roman philosophy,
though enjoying high repute in the Middle Ages, and even as late as
in the last century, has, however, for the philosophical development
of the science of ethics scarcely any significance. The Stoic Romans
did little more than indulge in general popular discussions on the philosophy
they had adopted from the Greeks; the Epicurean Romans simply applied
their views practically. Cicero is simply a discreet
The ethics
of the Old Testament presents, in its entire essence, a direct contrast
to all heathen ethics. Without systematic form and without scientific
development, it is yet perfectly self-consistent in its ground, its
essence and its end. In harmony with the idea of God as a spirit absolutely
independent of nature, and himself omnipotently conditioning the whole
sphere of nature, the ground of all morality is absolutely and exclusively
God’s holy will as revealed to the free personal creature; the essence
of the moral is free, loving obedience to the revealed divine will; the
ultimate end of morality is the realizing of perfect God-likeness, and
hence also of perfect God-sonship and bliss, not merely for the individual,
not merely for the people Israel, butt for all humanity,—and hence the
realization of a humanity-embracing kingdom of God; the most immediate
historical end,
As in the presentation
of Christian ethics, further on, we shall have to glance in considerable
detail also at its historical antecedent, namely, Old Testament ethics,
hence we need here give only the general characteristics of the latter. In addition
to general works on Old Testament theology, which treat mostly of the
ethical phase only incidentally, and to the works mentioned in § 5,
may be cited, G. L. Bauer: Bibl. Moral des A. T., 1803, 2 vols.,—extremely
Rationalistic; (Imm. Berger: Prakt. Einl. ins A. T., continued by Augusti,
1799-1808, 4 vols.)
The antagonism of the moral idea of the Old Testament to the views of
collective heathenism, is radical and fundamental; there is here no
shadow of a transition from the latter to the former. Pre-Christian
revealed ethics dld not, however, have a scientific, systematic form,
and indeed could not have it, inasmuch as the key to its correct understanding
was to be given only in the days of the Messiah, and as the Hebrews
were not to be a perfect, independently-developed nation, but to find
their full truth only in Christianity.—The Hebrews do not undertake
to find the ground of the moral consciousness in the human spirit itself,
for the man whom they know as real is no longer the pure image of God,—has
no longer the unobscured natural consciousness of God and of the moral,—and even unfallen man needed to be awakened to this consciousness by
the revelation of Gold. The entire ground of the moral consciousness
is therefore sought in God’s positive revelation to man, as
The purpose, the goal
of the moral is not the merely individual perfection of the moral subject,
but it is, on the one hand, the salvation and perfection of the whole
human race,—a thought entirely unknown to heathendom—and, on the other,
the full and blissful life-communion of the person with God; “I will
be your God, and ye shall be my people” [
Immediately upon the creation of man
the thought of the moral presents itself clearly and definitely [
Hebrew
ethics, however, does not linger, as was almost exclusively the case
with heathen ethics, in the purely ideal sphere,—in the consideration
of the good per se,—does not conceive of evil as a mere possibility
or as a merely exceptional or isolated reality, or as a nature-necessity
back of all human guilt (which are all, in fact, heathen views)—but
looks evil earnestly and squarely in the face, and regards it as a sad,
all-prevalent reality, the guilt of which lies in the free act of man,
and is participated in by all without exception. The morality of the
chosen people of God looks, therefore, not merely to a warding off and
an avoiding of evil as a something as yet external to our heart, and
merely threatening us, but to a zealous, constant combating of the same,
not outside of us in an originally defective world, but within in the
inmost guilt-laden heart of the subject himself. Sin is of historical
origin,—an historical reality and power; and morality, the nature of
which presents itself now quite predominantly as a vigorous combating
against sin, appears also itself in a uniformly historical character,—is promoted and
guided by a divine history-chain of ever richer-unfolding gracious guidances, and gives rise to a moral history, to a redemption-history,
to a kingdom of God here upon earth inside of humanity,—at first, in
faith and hope, and afterwards (after it has reached the goal promised
by God from the very start, and embraced by the people with pious confidence,
and kept constantly in view) in full, blissful reality. Heathenism
knows indeed evil, knows vice, but it does not know sin, for sin is
of a morally-historical character; hence it knows also of no historical
overcoming of the same, no expecting, no preparing for, nor realization
of, a kingdom of God in humanity; the Persians alone have an obscure
presentiment thereof, perhaps not without a ray of light received from
the people of God, with whom they were in contact, and whom,
On the entrance of sin into the world there
arises at once a separation among men between those who permit themselves
to be fettered by sin and those who retain God and his salvation in
view, between the children of the world and the children of God; God,
however, looks in compassionate love also upon the former and plans
for them a redemption, the world-historical preparation of which is
confided to that people which He separates out from among the men of
sin, and paternally guides; God separates to himself the man of faith,—him who trusts in God with rock-like firmness and cheerfully and unconditionally
obeys his word even where he is unable to comprehend it and where it
diametrically contradicts his own natural consciousness. God places
before Abraham, from the very start, not a merely personal, but a world-historical
goal: “In thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed” [
This people, so
strictly cut off from all the rest of the race, this people hated, oppressed,
down-trodden by the rest of mankind, becomes thus, from the very beginning,
of world-
The Israelites have and could have this high world-historical mission
only because they were made to conceive of themselves from the very
beginning as, not a nature-people, but as a spiritual people which obtained
for itself its natural
The Israelite, in his moral strivings, has the
highest good hopefully and confidently in view, and not for the individual
person alone, but for humanity.— The idea of the highest good, the fundamental
thought of all morality, has, in the Old Testament history, a very
distinct development. It appears in God’s promises, on the one hand,
as a grace, and, on the other, as a reward for trusting fidelity,—neither
of which is by any means to be separated from, or regarded as contradictory
to, the other. In the first blessing after the creation, as we have
already seen, the thought of the highest good is already indicated;
by sin, however, the blessing is changed into a curse, the highest good
is thrown into the far distant, and is only obscurely alluded to in
the promise of the ultimate victory of the seed of the woman over the
seed of the serpent [
In view of this high spiritual conception of-the highest
good, it appears as in the highest degree a surprising fact that the
thought of a life after death is not directly brought to bear upon
the moral life,—is not presented as a motive of action, or as a phase
of the highest good,—a peculiarity that is all the more striking when
we consider that the children of Israel had lived for four centuries
in Egypt, and that Moses had been educated in the wisdom of this country,
where precisely this thought of immortality very powerfully shaped
the entire moral and religious life, and when we further consider that
this thought itself was most unquestionably recognized among the
Although the law had essentially also
the purpose of awakening the consciousness of the antagonism of the
sinful nature of man against the holy will of God, thus implying that
the full consciousness of the sinful perversion of human nature was
a state that had as yet to be attained to, nevertheless this consciousness
exists from the very beginning, and that too very vividly, as we shall
hereafter see; and it is especially noteworthy that notwithstanding
the high reverence which the Israelites had for their patriarchs and
for the prophets of God, still they were very far from regarding them
as moral ideals. It is true, there are mentioned pious and just men,
such as Enoch and Noah; and the faithfulness of Abraham shines forth
typically even into the New Covenant; but they are never presented as
real holy types of morality, (not even in
Old Testament morality has essentially a preparatory
character,—refers forward to a higher and as yet to be acquired
Old Testament morality presents a moral
task not only to the individual person, but it also keeps in view, from
the very start, the necessity of moral communion. It conceives of the
moral significance of the. family more highly than any of the heathen
systems; in giving to reverence for parents a religious ground, it guarantees
at the same time the moral rights of children as against sinful parents;
and if it is not as yet able to raise marriage to the height of the
Christian view, inasmuch as only the truly spiritually-regenerated are
in a condition to appreciate and fulfill its full significance [
As Old Testament redemption-history presents essentially
an educative preparation for the historical accomplishing of the redemption-act,
hence it is clearly manifest that this preparation must be a historically-progressive
one, and that consequently Old Testament ethics itself must have an
historical development. This, as yet, very unsatisfactorily-treated
portion of Biblical theology cannot, however, be fully presented in
the brief space to which the plan of our historical Introduction confines us;
we therefore remark here only two points, (1), that the essential character
of the moral view (and the question is here simply as to essential features)
is contradictory to the heathen view, and different from the Christian,
and, throughout all the writings of the Old Testament, self-consistent
and the same: and, (2), that the prophetic redemption-history is closely
connected with the legislative, seeing that Moses himself was the greatest
among the prophets. The prophets, in the narrower sense of the word,
do not give an essentially new moral
In the fact that the moral is not derived from the natural conscience
of man, seeing that the conscience is no longer the pure expression
of the original God-consciousness, but that, on the contrary, the historically-revealed
will of God is the exclusive source of the moral command, there lies
an essential reason why Hebrew ethics did not develop itself into a
philosophy; the very thought of such a philosophy conflicts
The Old Testament Apocryphal Books, Comp. Stäudlin:
Gesch. der Sittenl.
Jesu, i, 358; Cramer: Moral der Apokr., 1814; (also in Keil and Tzschirner’s
Analekten, 1814, ii, 1, 2,); Räbiger: Ethica libe apocr., 1838; Keerl:
Die Apokr. d. A. T., 1852, somewhat unfair; comp. Hengstenberg: Für
Beibehaltung der Apokr.
The moral thoughts
of the Apocrypha give clear evidence of some degree of obscuration of
the consciousness of redemption-history, both in respect to its presupposition,
namely, the fall and its consequences, and in regard to its true nature
in the Ancient Covenant, and also in regard to its historical goal—the
expected redemption-act by Christ. With the obscuration of this thought
go naturally enough hand in hand a manifest coming into the fore-ground
of a certain holiness by works, in the manner of the heathen moralists
[comp.
As in Sirach the vigorously-growing tree of Old Testament
ethics begins to show signs of failing vitality, so in the Talmud (A.
D. 200-600) we find the dead and decayed or petrified trunk. Mishna translated by Rabe, 1760, 6 vols.—Talmud Babli, the
Babylonian
Talmud, by Pinner, 1842.—Schulchan Aruch by Löwe, 1836, 4 vols.—Fassel:
Die mosaisch-rabbin. Tugend-u. Pflichtenl., 2 ed., 1842.
Observation. Islamism,—which finds its place in
the history of the religious and moral spirit not as a vital organic
member, but as violently interrupting the course of this history, and
Imm.
Berger: Ueber die Moral des Koran in Stäudlin’s Beiträge zur Phil.,
v, 250, (1799), superficial.—Weil: Mohammed, 1843.—Sprenger: Leben
u. Lehre des Moh., 1862.
In Christianity
alone morality and ethics are enabled to reach their perfection,—the
former being perfected in the person of Christ himself, the latter being
in process of self-perfection in the progressive intellectual activity
of the church.—The subjective and the objective grounds of morality
are given, in Christianity, in full sufficiency. On the one hand, the
moral subject has attained to a fill consciousness of sin, of its general
sway, of its historical significancy, and of its guilt; on the other,
he has, by redemption, become free from his bondage under sin. and risen
again to moral freedom,—has again attained to the possibility of accomplishing
his moral task. On the one hand, the objective ground of the moral—God—is
now for the first, perfectly, personally and historically revealed to
man, and God’s will not merely manifested in unclouded clearness in
his Word and through the historical appearance of the Redeemer himself,
but also, by the holy, divine Spirit as imparted to the redeemed, written
into their hearts; on the other, this God stands no longer in violent
antithesis
The goal of morality has become an other,—has risen from the state of hope to a constantly-growing reality. God-sonship is not placed simply at the remote termination of the moral career, but is from the very beginning already present; the Christian strives not merely in moral aspiration toward it, but lives and acts in it and as inspired by it; he cannot possibly live or act morally if he is not already God’s child; he has his goal already from the very beginning as a blessed reality, and his further goal is in fact simply fidelity in this God-sonship,—a sinking deeper into it, a strengthening and purifying of it by a constantly greater triumphing over the sinfiul nature which yet clings to the Christian, namely, the “flesh” which lusts against the spirit; and for collective humanity the moral goal is and has been realizing itself from the beginning in ever increasing fullness, namely, in the fact that all nation-separating barriers progressively fall away, and that the Word of life increasingly assumes form in the God-fearing of all nationalities,—constituting the kingdom of God in its gradual rising to full historical reality in a universal Christian church.
The essence of morality has risen from the
stage of the obedience of a faithful servant to that of the loving,
confiding freedom of the children of God. Man has the command no longer
as a merely outward, purely objective one, uncongenial to his subjective
nature, but as an inward one dwelling within him, and as become his
personal possession, and hence as
There is no need here of detailed developments or proofs; we desire simply to present the ground-character of Christian ethics as in contrast to heathen ethics. This much is clear from what we have already said, that morality must assume here an entirely other form than in heathendom, and even in many respects a different one from that in the Old Testament. No heathen ethical system looks to the formation of aI kingdom of God embracing all mankind; the freedom of the will is either denied or restricted to a very few favored ones, and with these it is regarded as unaffected by the historical power of sin; heathenism knows nothing of personal love to God as a moral motive, and of the personal love of God to all men as its antecedent condition. Christianity takes it just as earnestly with the reality, the power and the guilt of sin, as with the real, historical, overcoming of the same through Christ. Man, as not from nature free, but as become free by historical redemption-act and by the personal appropriation of the same, is the true subject, capable of all true morality; and hence the realization of this morality depends no longer on a mere nature-conditionment, but solely on man’s free self-determination for or against his redemption. That which is presumptuously presupposed by the Greek philosophers as already possessed by the elect few who are capable of true morality, namely, true will-freedom and a personal moral consciousness springing from the inner essence of the soul, all this has attained to its full truth only. in Christianity, namely, in that the false security of a merely natural freedom and power is overcome and remedied. Both freedom and power are procured for all who wish them, and that not by self-deception, but by a real moral redemption-act of the alone holy One.
That the highest
good is not a something to be attained to exclusively by moral action,
but, on the contrary, in its essence a power graciously conferred on
the willing heart, a power which has true morality simply as its fruit
and subjective perfection, and which manifests this morality essentially
as faithfulness, as a preserving and virtualizing of the received grace,—this
is a thought utterly foreign to all heathendom, and which is placed,
even in the Old Testament, only in the promised future; and upon this
thought,
Heathen
ethics is always simply of a purely individual character, or, if it
relates to a moral community-life, then only of a merely civil character,
as consisting in obedience to laws purely human, and valid only for
a particular people; or where, as in China, the state is regarded as
of divine origin and essence, there individual morality becomes essentially
a mere mechanical self-conforming to an eternally on-revolving unspiritual
world-order; Christian morality is, on the contrary, never of a merely
individual character, but absolutely and always an expression of moral
communion—on the one hand, with the personal Saviour and God, and, on
the other, with the Christian society; its essential nature is therefore
love in the fullest sense. of the word, and it is never of a merely
civil character but belongs to a purely moral community-life,—a life
that rests in no respect on nature-limits or on unfreedom,—namely, that
of the Church as the historical kingdom of God.— In contradistinction
to worldward-turned heathenism, Christians make the foundation and essence
of all moral life to consist in the constant direction of the heart
to God; and especially in prayer—(which, as exalted by the communion
of devotion, becomes the principal phase of the entire religious life,
and conditions and preserves a direct personal life-communion with God)—the
entire moral life shapes itself into an expression of the religious
consciousness as certain of its reconciliation with God. The Christian
stands not alone in his moral life, nor is he merely a member of a moral
society, but he stands in constant vital personal life-communion with
God, and derives therefrom constantly new moral power. And precisely
because Christian morality
But prayer, wherein
man enters into communion with God, is, as also the example of the ancient
church shows, essentially intercession,—implies moral communion. The
development of morality into a collective life of the moral society,—into
a collective morality,—is an essentially new phenomenon. Heathendom
knew indeed the indefinite and merely impersonal, abstract power of
national custom, as well as the very definite but unfree-working power
of the civil law and of political rulers, but it knew nothing of a free
moral power of the truly moral community. The Christian community itself
is the clearly duty-conscious upholder, promoter and conservator of the
morality of the individuals; it has the duty of the moral overseeing,
furthering and guiding of all its members, and hence also of moral discipline,
and, as involved in this, also the power of inflicting moral discipline
upon the unfaithful,—consisting essentially in the withdrawing of communion
with them, in the excluding of them from the moral whole as being non-tolerant
of any immoral element. The community-life is of so purely moral,
so intensely unitary, a character, that the unfaithfulness of a single
member thrills through the moral whole, and, because of the intimate
love of the whole for all the individuals, is painfully felt and reproved
and rejected by the society. The totality stands surety for the morality
of the individual, and the individual for that of totality; the moral
life of the spiritual organism has attained to its truth. The thought
of church-discipline,—which raises morality-above the sphere of mere
individuality, without, however, giving to the community-life the power
of outward coercion, such as that of the state, but on the contrary
preserves and gives effect to this life as a purely spiritual power,—is
an essentially Christian thought, and is only there practical where
the moral idea
In the emancipation of the human spirit
by redemption, in the taking up of the moral idea into the inner heart
of the consciousness, there lie, now, the possibility of, and the incentive
to, a scientific development of the moral consciousness. Heathendom developed
an ethical science only on the basis of a presumed freedom and autonomy
of the spirit of the natural man; the Old Testament religion developed
none at all, because in it the divine law was as yet an absolutely objective
and merely passively-given one, to which man could stand only in an
obeying relation. But Christianity regains for the human spirit its
true freedom,—makes the merely objective law into an also perfectly
subjective one, into one that lives in the heart of the regenerated
as his real property, one that enlightens the reason and becomes thereby
truly rational; and hence there is here given the possibility of shaping
this pure moral subject-matter as embraced in the divinely enlightened
conscience, into free scientific self-development. But Christian ethics,
naturally enough, developed itself as a science only after its presuppositions,
namely, the dogmatical questions in regard to God, to Christ and to
man had attained to some degree of ripeness in the dogmatic consciousness
of the church, and hence it appears for a long while predominantly only
in closest involution with dogmatics, and in popular ecclesiastical
instruction in the form of rules and exhortations, and in part also
in ecclesiastically-defined life-regulations enforced by ecclesiastical
discipline. The notion that the ancient church could and should have
passed over the great dogmatic questions and devoted itself primarily
and predominantly, or in fact exclusively, to the development of a system of
morals as the essence proper of Christianity, is very erroneous. If we once
perceive and admit that the Christian world-theory in general, in respect to
God, to the creature, and especially to the nature of man, is of a character
diametrically opposed to the heathen view, and if we admit that morality cannot
be of an unconscious and merely instinctive character, but must rest on a
rational consciousness, then it is perfectly clear that the consciousness must
first be scientifically informed in regard to the reality of existence, before
that the consciousness of that which, in virtue of the character of
The three natural chief epochs of church history constitute also those of the history of Christian ethics.
Morality, as never separated from piety, and as uniformly
based on loving faith in the Redeemer, and as upheld, fostered and watched
over by the church-communion, appears in its inner phase as essentially
love to God, and to Christ and to his disciples as brethren, and in
its outer phase as a strict rejection of heathen customs, which latter
feature, both in consequence of the persecutions suffered and because
of the deep corruption of the extra-Christian world, assumes the form
not unfrequently of a painfully-anxious self-seclusion from the same;
and when, with the victory of Christianity over heathenism, from the
time of Constantine on, worldliness pressed into the church itself,
then, as a natural counterpoise against this worldliness, world-renunciation
was made to apply, among the more pious-minded Christians, even to the
sensuously-worldly phase of the Christian life, and was intensified,
in the hermit-life, even to morbidness; and in consequence of the distinction
which gradually sprang up in the church itself out of this antithesis
in the Christian life, namely, between the moral commands,
The moral views of the early Church are at once
distinguishable from those of later Judaism by their profound grasping into the
pious heart as the living fountain of a true and free morality, and from those
of heathenism by the purity and rigor of the fundamental principles involved;
and the unavoidable militant resistance against the demoralized heathen
world naturally enough heightened this rigor to a degree which, but
for this, seems no longer required. The essential difference of the
Christian moral law from that of the Old Testament is fully recognized
as early as from the time of Barnabas (Ep. c. 19). The rigorous element
shows itself especially in respect to all sensuous pleasure and all
worldly diversion, to marriage, to temporal possessions, and to political
power, and to whatever is in any manner implicated with heathenism.
In contrast to heathen laxity, the ancient Christians were all the more
anxiously watchful against all dominion of sensuous desire, esteeming
fasting very highly, though not as a commanded duty, and eschewing the
demoralizing and religion-periling influence of the heathen stage and
of other amusements; and the severity of their sufferings under the
hatred of the world naturally enough made all worldly pleasure appear
as in diametrical antagonism to Christian-mindedness. In a well-grounded
persuasion of the dangers involved, the Christians declined to accept
official positions in the heathen State. Chasteness even in thought
was rigorously insisted upon; marriage was held more sacred than had
ever been done before, and the sensuous element of the same was guarded
within strict limits; and in view of the troubles of the times, and
of the expectation of a near second-coming of Christ (which pretty generally
prevailed in the first two centuries), very many inclined to a preference
of celibacy, without, however, regarding it as a specially-meritorious
course of conduct; second marriages, however, were generally viewed
as an infidelity to the first consort. Riches were
Notwithstanding the rigor of the moral view of the Christians, it nevertheless differs essentially from that of the Stoics, because of its fundamental character of joyous faith and love; it is in no respect a harsh, stiff or dismal, but, on the contrary, a thoroughly vigorous, youthful and joyous self-sacrificing life, in the full enjoyment of inner peace and of a conscious blessedness. These features were measurably lost only when the Christian Church itself ceased to be the pure moral antithesis of the un-Christian world, and when, having become a State-Church, it admitted into itself even worldly, and in so far, also, heathen elements. And it was now an essentially correct consciousness which inspired the more pious of the believers with a disinclination to the life and pursuits of the great mass of Christians, and drove them into separating themselves from them. The error, however, was this, that instead of separating the unpious from the Church itself, they chose the separation, within the Church, of the pious from communion with the mass of the Church, and thereby rendered the exclusion of the immoral from the Church more impracticable than ever,—in other words, that, instead of morally purifying the natural elements that inhered both in themselves and in the society, they despisingly withdrew the spiritual from all contact with the natural.
The first theoretical as well as practical separation
of the ascetes (as imitated from the distinction, prevalent in the heathen
world, between philosophers and the unphilosophical multitude, and as
extending even to their costume), who thought by extreme world-renunciation
to attain to an especially high moral perfection, and, as consequent
thereon, also the distinguishing of a general Christian morality from
a higher (and in some sense voluntary) ascetic morality, manifests itself
in the third century in the currents of Alexandrian thought which had
been so largely influenced by heathen philosophy,—as yet but feebly
in Clemens Alexandrinus, Strom., p. 775, 825 (Potter). Comm. in Ep. ad Rom., 507 (De la Rue).
The development of monasticism introduced a dualism into Christian morality, in that it proposed for the ascetes a morality essentially different from that of the rest of the Christian world, the latter being based upon the divine command, and the former upon pretended divine counsels; with this error were more or less affected Lactantius, Ambrose, Chrysostom, Jerome, and Augustine. In consequence of this, general Christian morality was degraded to a mere minimum; the truly good was made to be different from the divine command, and this good was considered no longer as the imperative will of God, but only, as it were, a divine wish, the fulfilling of which procures for man a special extraordinary merit, but the non-fulfilling of which awakens no divine displeasure. The more general prevalence of this view involved the overthrow of purely evangelical ethics, and the beginning of the perversion of the moral life of the Church in practical respects. By far the greatest portion even of the dogmatic and ecclesiastical errors of the Romish and Greek Churches has sprung from this very notion of a special sanctity in monasticism,
Ethics itself appears
not as yet in scientific form and apart from the presentation of the
subject-matter of dogmatics; it appears more in the popular edificatory
than in the scientific writings, and approaches more nearly a scientific
form in the works written in self-defense against the heathen. The first
connected and somewhat comprehensive presentation of ethics—by Ambrose—in the manner of Cicero, is scientifically of little value; while the
brilliant, penetrative, and ingenious moral thoughts of Augustine,
(which, along with Aristotle, formed the foundation of Mediaeval
The ethical views of the Ebionites and Gnostics offer many interesting
phases, but they have too little influence in the shaping of the ethics
of the church, and are, without a fuller examination, too obscure to
justify us in entering upon the subject here at all: comp. Neander: Gesch. d. christl. Sittenl., pp. 111, 137.
The strict moral life of the early Christians furnished indeed in its inner experiences weighty matter for ethics; ethics proper, however, confined itself at first to the framing of life-rules, which, resting on the fundamental thought of faith and love, were enforced and supported by Scripture texts and by apostolical tradition, by the example of Christ and of the saints of sacred history, and by spiritual experience, and, at a later period, also by the example and authority of the martyrs, and by the definitions [canones] of the synods, but they were not as yet digested into a scientific whole. From the moral philosophy of the heathen the Church Fathers kept themselves substantially clear, though they adopted from the Platonic and Stoic, and from the later popular philosophy of the Eclectics, many forms and thoughts. The earlier Fathers, also Irenaeus, involved themselves in perplexities by the fact that, basing themselves primarily on the Old Testament writings, they often presented the moral life of the Patriarchs too fully as a pattern for Christians, although they recognized, throughout, the merely preparatory purpose of the Old Testament law.
In their genuine writings the apostolical
Fathers confine themselves to simple evangelically-earnest exhortations. Heyns:
De patrum ap. doctrina
morali, 1833; Van Gilse, the same subject, 1833.
The philosophically educated Justin the Martyr gives
special emphasis, in defense of Christianity, to its high moral (and
by him very earnestly conceived) views and practical workings, and to
its difference from the merely preparatory Old Testament law; he insists
very strongly on the freedom of the will as a condition of the moral;
but he manifests already a preference for celibacy as a higher perfection,
doubtless not without being somewhat influenced thereto by the Platonic
notion of the nature of matter.—Clemens Alexandrinus enters more direct
upon the nature of the moral. In his Exhortation to the Heathen (Logos protreptikos, cohortatio), he exposes the defectiveness of heathen
ethics, and in single characterizing strokes contrasts with it Christian
ethics, as the higher; in his Paedagogos, designed for beginners in Christianity,
he gives a more specific but at the same time more popular presentation
of the subject; but in his Stromata: he raises the Christian faith-consciousness,
and morality-consciousness to a much higher scientific form, evidencing
truly philosophic ability. The divine Logos,—who manifests himself
in fact in all true philosophy of the heathen, but in a still higher
degree in the Old Testament, and most fully and purely in the New Testament,—is also the pure fountain of the moral consciousness; with the Hebrews
the divine law
Origen has rich thoughts on the moral, scattered through his many writings, but especially in his Homilies and Commentaries and in his work against Celsus. His Scripture-exegesis is always pregnant with thought, though often venturesomely interpreting and allegorizing, especially in the Old Testament. Freedom of will he insists on fully as strongly as does Clemens, with whom in other respects he essentially harmonizes. His moral views are rigid, but not harsh; the moral disposition alone constitutes, in his view, the worth of the deed; but his over-estimation of the monkish life and of martyrdom, and his doctrine that man can do more of the good and meritorious than is commanded of him, becloud somewhat the otherwise evangelical character of his ethics. His well-known dogmatical tendency to un-churchly opinion shows itself less prominently in the sphere of ethics, and even his notion of the pre-existence of souls does not essentially interfere with his moral ideas.
In striking
contrast to the freer idealistic tendency of the Alexandrians, and in
harshest Occidental realism, stands the African theologian Tertullian.
Greatly delighting in spiritual eccentricities, and inclined to daring
exaggerations of per se true thoughts, this writer presents Christian
ethics in his
De poenit., c. 2, 6;
De pudicitia, c. 2, 19; comp.
Adv. Marc., 4, 9. De idolol., c. 1 sqq. De idol., c. 17, 18, 21. De corona militis, c. 11;
De idol., c.
19.
Cyprian, a great admirer of Tertullian, but more churchly than he, and in his moral judgments more mild, developed, one-sidedly, still further, the ascetic phase of Christian morality; abstinence from enjoyment, steadfastness in suffering, martyrdom, and beneficence to the poor, appear, to him, as the highest virtues; strict churchliness, obedient submission to the visible church and its episcopal guides, as the foundation of all Christian morality; heretical opinions and schismatic separation, as the ground of all moral corruption. While in Tertullian morality appears more as an individual manifestation of the religious personality, in Cyprian it is rather an expression of the community-life of the church. As to marriage and celibacy, he judges as Tertullian. (De unitate ecclesiae; Exhort. ad martyrium; De bono patientiae; De opere et eleemosynis; De zelo et livore; De oratione dominica; and many letters).
The severe dogmatic conflicts of the fourth
century which so deeply rent the Oriental church, turned the current
of thought somewhat away from ethics, so that we here find scarcely
any thing but merely popular and not scientific presentations of the
Orat. III, invect. in Jul., p. 94
sqq.
(ed. Col.); Orat. iv, c. 97 sqq. (ed. Bened.) Homil. in Act., opp.
(ed. Montf.) ix, 93.
In the more practically-inclined
and less dogmatically-rent Occident, we find, already in the fourth
century, more comprehensive treatises on the moral subject-matter of
Christianity, but—as differing from the more idealistic and philosophic
Greek doctors—in a rather realistic, legal, juridical manner; and it
is characteristic that precisely the most excellent of the ethical writers
among the Latin Fathers were originally jurists and rhetoricians.—Lactantius,
in his Institutiones divinae (III-VI), treats of the ethical quite largely,
critically assailing heathen ethics, and defending spiritedly the ethics
of Christianity. The highest good, as the ground-question of ethics,
lie finds in the blissful communion of the immortal spirit with God,
a communion which is to be attained to only in the Christian religion,
and of which, in heathendom, not even the conception is to be found.
Christianity alone, but not heathen philosophy, affords a knowledge
of the moral goal, and of the moral way, and furnishes also in Christ
the moral example, and moral strength, and lastly, in pure unselfish
love, the true moral motive. The unchurchly and dualistically-inclining
notion entertained by Lactantius, of a certain primitively-ordained
necessity of evil (ii, 8, 9, 12; vi, 15; De ira Dei, 55) has not much
interfered with his other moral thoughts.—Ethics attains, in a feeble
and ill-adapted outward imitation of Cicero, to a scientific form, though
without really scientific development, through the labors of Ambrose,
whose work De officiis ministrorum, though for a long time highly
prized, is yet rhetorical in style, and feeble in scientific contents;
and yet, notwithstanding that it introduces, undigested, many foreign
thoughts and forms into the field of Christian thought in order to conceal
a manifest lack of theological culture, it still commends itself by
the warmth of a sincere heart, by its enthusiasm for active piety and
by ingenious trains of thought. Though treating in this work primarily
of the duties of clergymen, Ambrose yet considers also pretty extensively
those of Christians in general; as a whole, however, it has little order
and consecutiveness, and, notwithstanding its frequent prolixity and
repetitions, leaves many points but slightly touched. He cites many
Biblical examples, especially
Much higher in spirit and penetration than the views
of the other Latin Fathers, stand St. Augustine’s ethical disquisitions,—De doctrina christiana, De civitate dei, De moribus ecclesicae catholicae,
De libero arbitrio, and other works—without, however, presenting a connected
ethical system. In Augustine the Occidental church not only manifests
her radical antithesis to the fundamental and dangerous errors of the
Pelagian school, but she further develops at the same time the ethically-significant
and healthful antithesis to the more
Love to God as the ground-virtue unfolds
itself into the four cardinal virtues: TEMPERANTIA,
amor integrum se
pracbens ei, quod amatur; FORTITUDO, amor facile tolerans omnia propter
quod amartur; JUSTITIA, amor soli amato serviens et propterea recte
dominans; PRUDENTIA, amor ea, quibus adjuvatur, ab eis, quibus impeditur,
sagaciter seligens. De moribus
eccl., c. 15 (25) sqq., 25 (46); De lib. arb., 1, 13; 2, 10. Enchiridion,
s. de fide, spe et charitate; de doctr. christ., 1, 37; 3, 10, et al.
Evil or sin is in essence and
origin a lack of true love, that is, a love not to God but to the world
and its lusts, and primarily a love to self that does not rest on love
to God, that is self-seeking. From self-seeking springs evil desire
(concupiscentia) which becomes a power over the spirit. Evil become
real in no sense whatever from God, but through the free choice, through
the guilt, of free creatures,—is a guilty ruining of the originally
good. The distinction (referring primarily to the administration and
practice of penance) between venial and mortal sins (peccata venalia
et mortifera s. mortalia), Augustine defines in the thenceforth prevailing
sense, thus,—that the latter include all sins consciously and
Sermo,
351; Enchir., 70, 71; comp. De fide et op., c. 19 (34);
As to the requirements of morality in detail, Augustine is no less earnest
than judicious, forming quite a contrast to the manifold laxities of
the age, and to many errors and extreme views of earlier Church Fathers,
and, on the whole, he conceived of Christian morality much more profoundly
than had yet been done by church writers; but his more especial merit
consists in this, that he brought clearly and definitely into prominence
the foundation of all morality, namely, faith and the essence of faith,
to wit, love to God, and that he referred the validity of outward works
more definitely than had been done before to the inner disposition of
the actor. A truly evangelical spirit breathes through the greater part
of his moral views; and even where, in harmony with the spirit of the
times, he laudingly emphasizes outward good works, and particularly
fasting, alms-giving and monastic asceticism, he still always lays greater
stress on the state of the heart than on the work itself. His greatest
departure from a purely evangelical consciousness is the recognition
of the, then, already long-prevalent distinction between the divine
commands and the divine counsels; the latter refer essentially to the
giving up of allowed enjoyments, and especially to the abstaining from
marriage. The man who leaves the counsels unobserved, sins not; he who
fulfills them, acquires for himself higher virtue; wedlock-virtue is
merely human virtue, but virginal chastity is angelic virtue. Marriage
is indeed per se holy and pure, and prevailed also in the state of
sinlessness, De Genesi ad litt., 9, 3 sqq., 7. De Sancta virginitate; De bono conjugali; De nuptiis
et concupis.
The great decline of the scientific
life in the Occident from and after the close of the fifth century,
manifested its effects also in the field of ethics. Little more was
done than to make collections of the opinions (sententiae) of the Fathers,
and to apply them to purposes of Church-discipline and of popular instruction.
But there was no further creative production. In reducing to greater
system the discipline of penance, the interest was turned rather to
the discriminating, defining and classifying of sins than to the scientific
examination of the moral in general. The knowledge of Greek ethics disappeared
almost entirely, and the work of Boëthius, De consolatione philosophiae
(about A.D. 542), Fr. Nitzsch: System des Boëth., 1860, p. 42 sqq. Κεφάλαια περὶ ἀγάπης.
Standing entirely apart, and of influence only in the Middle
Ages, is the pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (fifth century) who introduced
Neo-Platonic mysticism into Christianity, and whose Pantheistically-inclined
world-theory invades here and there also the moral sphere. Especially
in De divinis nominibus; De coelesti hierarchia; De myst. theol.
The ecclesiastical consciousness, as having arrived now at greater repose, but as also in a state of spiritual paralysis, limits itself primarily to the preserving and digesting of the views already-attained to, and to the constructing of systems of life-rules on the basis of the decisions of the Fathers and of church councils,—at best elucidated anew by examples from the Scriptures or from the legends of the saints. The practical decisions on the subject of church penance gave rise gradually, in connection with these collections of rules, to a very minutely-specifying system of casuistry, which, however, related primarily chiefly to transgressions. The moral views themselves were already largely estranged from evangelical purity, and an ascetic monk-morality, not binding upon all, passed as the ideal of Christian virtue, while the general morality, binding upon all, was to a large degree neglected.
The libri poenitentiales, for
the use of confessors, are based for the most part on the decisions
of synods and on ancient practice, but are also in some degree complemented
by their respective authors; they give for the most part little more
than imperfectly classified and illogically connected registers of
single sins and of the church-penances and penalties imposed therefor,
the latter of course without established and certain norms (Theodore
of Canterbury, Bede, Halitgarius and others). These books form the beginning
of a casuistical treatment of ethics, which was subsequently extended
to other questions than sins, especially to cases of conscience.—Attempts
at a more independent and more connected, but yet, on the whole, purely
In proportion as the zeal of love abated, and worldly-mindedness increased in the church at large, in the same proportion arose, as in antithesis to this secularism of the church, a zeal for a special holiness transcending the general morality required of all. Directions for the monkish life form a favorite topic for ecclesiastical moralists; the merits of the ascetic life are more warmly lauded than the practical Christian life in the civil or domestic spheres, and wedlock is progressively more deeply disparaged as in contrast to entire renunciation; consorts are loaded with praise, who divorce themselves in order to practice such renunciation; and according to Damiani’s assertion, even St. Peter had to undergo the martyr-death in order to wash away the stains of his wedlock-life (De perfectione monach, c. 6).
The
philosophy of the Middle Ages, and especially Scholasticism, was occupied
for a long while almost exclusively with speculations on dogmatical
and metaphysical questions, leaving ethics almost untouched; wherever,
however, it brought ethics within the sphere of its intellectual activity,
there it treated the same merely in connection with dogmatics, and for
the most part in the light of the opinions of Augustine, and, later,
of those of Plato and Aristotle,—often bunglingly combining the latter
with the former.—The brilliant but idealistico-Pantheistically inclined
mystical philosophy of John Scotus Erigena, which threw its lights,
as well as its shades, into the
The spiritualistico-idealistic tendency of the Schoolmen could primarily treat of the moral only collaterally, at least until the dogmatical and metaphysical fields had attained to some degree of philosophical maturity and self-consciousness. The potent influence of Augustine made itself felt also in the ethical field, and his ground-thoughts re-appear in almost all the Schoolmen. The freedom of the will is, however, distinctly recognized, although, in man after the fall, as in a trammeled condition; but also Greek philosophy was powerfully influential on ethics, not merely as to the form, but also as to the subject-matter. The Platonic classification of the virtues was already early combined with the three theological virtues, notwithstanding the inconsistency and impracticability of such a uniting of two entirely different stand-points. In how far John Scotus’ attempted translation of Aristotle’s Ethics into Latin was of influence, is doubtful; the application of Aristotle to Christian ethics appears in a more direct form, first, in the thirteenth century.
The deep-thinking John Scotus Erigena (at the court of Charles the Bald,
then at Oxford, ob. 886), who was not understood by his own age, and
who had but little connection with it even in his errors, touches in
his chief work, De divisione naturae, also upon the more general ethical
topics, and molds them to his idealistico-Pantheistical system,—a system
based on the Neo-Platonic views of Dionysius the Areopagite, and which—very
different from recent naturalistic Pantheism—denies not the absolute
personal God, but on the contrary the independent reality of the world.
The world is only another existence-form of the eternal God himself;
God alone is real; the creature, in so far as it is conceived as distinct
from God, is nothing; it exists only in so far as it is wholly identical
with God. God is whatever truly exists, because He himself does all
and is in all; Good in not merely the most excellent part of the creature,
but He is its beginning, its middle and its end—the essence and true
being in all things. The coming into being of the world is
It is only in
the twelfth century that ethics is seriously treated of by scholastic
science;—first by Hildebert of Tours (ob. 1134), for the most part
in the light of the Roman Eclectic and Stoic philosophies;—then by Abelard,
who, however, treats, mostly in a mere preliminary manner, of the more
general questions, giving proof of great acumen, but also sometimes
enfeebling the significancy of sin;—very fruitfully by Peter Lombard,
who presents, in the light of Augustinian thoughts, and with the help
of ancient philosophy, a very clear and well-arranged total of Christian
doctrine, of which ethics, though but briefly presented, constitutes
an essential part;—but with greatest thoroughness and fullness by Thomas Aquinas, who made large use of the Aristotelian philosophy in perfecting
a system of Christian speculation, and that, too, without thereby working
serious detriment to the Christian idea.— In Duns
Contemporaneously with scholasticism prevailed also the science of casuistry, which had also to do with practical life; this science was ill fact influenced by scholasticism to a higher development, and it attained to its highest perfection in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
Hildebert of Tours (about 1100) treated ethics for the first time in a special work:
Philosophia moralis de honesto et utili (Opp.
Par. 1708, p. 961 sqq). In philosophical contents it is as yet feeble
and dependent, and belongs rather to the sphere of Roman popular philosophy,
especially that of Cicero and Seneca, than to speculative science proper;
and the Christian element is thrown largely into the shade by that which
is borrowed from heathen moralists; the four Greek virtues are servilely
carried out; the relation of the honestum and
utile is extensively
discussed; and as a whole the work is immature and superficial. —Nearly cotemporaneously appears
Abelard’s Ethica, s. Scito te
The subject of ethics was treated with great skill, but rather ingeniously than profoundly, by Peter Lombard (ob. 1160), more especially in the third book of his Libri sententiarum,—a work which was for later schoolmen a very influential model and a high authority, though the relatively brief manner of treatment touches only upon the principal points. With a fully-developed system we are not as yet furnished; it is rather a dialectical analysis and examination of ideas than a profound speculative development from a fundamental principle. The ethical notions are presented first in definitions, then proved and illustrated by texts from Scripture and from the Fathers, and thereupon follow dialectical inquiries, comparisons of opposed views, and a definitive judgment.
The notion “good” has both an objective and a subjective significancy.
The good as object is the goal of the subjective good, the good will;
this good object is blessedness; eternal life in God, and hence God
himself in so far as he comes into communion with man (II, Dist. 38,
40). The presupposition of all morally good is will-freedom. This freedom
is primarily a threefold one: freedom from necessity, freedom from sin
as a dominating power, and freedom from misery. The first is unforfeitable,—exists
also in sinful man; the second is enjoyed by the redeemed, the third
by the saved. Before the fall man had perfect freedom,—could, by his
own strength, keep free from sin, though not attain to perfection save
as aided by divine grace, as, on the other hand, he could in his own
strength also turn to sin. Hence will-freedom is that capacity of the
rational will whereby it, by the assistance of divine grace (gracia
assistente), chooses the good, or, by not sharing in the same (eadem
desistente), the evil. In the rational will there is a natural striving,
though but feeble (licet tenuiter et exiliter), to choose the good;
but, by the assistance of grace, it becomes powerful and efficacious
Virtue is the right quality of the
human will as turned toward the good. The ground-virtue is, therefore,
love to God, as the substance of all good; and all virtues are closely
involved in each other, so that he who truly possesses one, possesses
them all, and he to whom one is lacking, lacks them all; no one can
have simply one virtue, for love is the mother of all the virtues, and
he who has the mother has also the children (III, Dist. 36). In agreement
with Augustine, Peter Lombard presents three chief-virtues. which, however,
are only different phases of the one love to God, namely: faith, hope,
love (fides, spes, charitas). (1)
FIDES est virtus, qua creduntur, quae
non videntur, namely, in the sphere of the religious; this faith is
threefold:)—(a) credere DEO, to believe the word of God; (b)
credere DEUM, to believe in the existence of God; both these forms of faith
are possible to the evil; (c) credere
IN DEUM, to love God in faith,
and to unite one’s self with him; this is true faith, which leads also
to truly good works (III, Dist. 23). (2) SPES
est virtus, qua spiritualia
et aeterna bona sperantu, i. e., cum fiducia exspectantur. This virtue
is only briefly and insufficiently developed, and is not clearly enough
distinguished from the first; for the statement that hope refers only
to future good, while faith refers also to
In the steps of Peter Lombard follows, in all essential points, Alexander Hales (ob. 1245), though he develops some points more fully, and contributes thereto original matter,—especially is this the case in his discussion of the moral law, which he distinguishes into the natural, the Mosaic, and the evangelical (Summa univ. theol., pars III). He separates the moral part of theology more distinctly than had yet been done from the dogmatical, as the “doctrine of manners,” and distributes it into the doctrine, first, of the divine law, second, of grace and the virtues, and, third, of the fruit of virtue.—(William of Paris [ob. 1249] discussed the more important points of morality in separate treatises grounded on Augustine and Aristotle). More learned, and especially distinguished by extensive use of Aristotle, are the ethical portions of the writings of Albertus Magnus (ob. 1280), though in other respects they do not contain very, much original speculation, and in some respects they show already a strong casuistical tendency.
It is through Thomas Aquinas that scholastic ethics was most highly
perfected both in form and in substance, and raised to a system of
profound speculation. His great work, Summa theologiae, prima et secunda
secundae, combines, in comprehensive thoroughness, a clear intellectual
insight with
The ethics of Thomas Aquinas, which is directly connected with
his dogmatics, is distributed into a general and a special part, of
which the former treats of the virtues and vices in general, and the
latter of the same in detail, so that the whole is made to appear predominantly,
though not exclusively, as the doctrine of virtue.—Man is the image
of God principally in virtue of his reason; but an essential element
of reason is the freedom of the will, namely, the free determining of
our own activity. All activity, and hence also that of irrational creatures,
has an end; hence human activity must have a rational end, and one which
man knows as such, and which is aimed at by free will-determination,
whereas irrational creatures seek their end unconsciously and from natural
instinct. But rational ends are such only in so far as they do not constitute
a mere interminable plurality, but converge and terminate in one last
and highest good, upon which consequently all rational activity is directed.
This one highest end, and hence the highest good, which the rational
creature seeks to attain to, cannot consist in outward, perishable,
and hence unessential things, but only in the one absolutely imperishable,
the divine, namely, in communion with God, and hence in the absolutely
perfect life of the rational creature,—in blessedness. God is the objective,
blessedness the subjective, phase of the highest good. The human soul per se, and without being united with God, cannot be happy; hence the
highest good is not a something belonging to the soul per se,—has its
ground not in the soul but in God;
The
readiness of the soul for well-acting is virtue,—which is consequently
to be conceived of not as mere action, but as a permanent power and
tendency for acting, as a habitus, as a power of the rational will.
The virtues are primarily of a natural character; that is, such as belong
to man as such, to his natural rational being, and are developed by
exercise and habituation, although they cannot in themselves attain
to perfection (ii, 1, qu. 55-59, 63). They are distinguished as knowledge-virtues
and moral virtues (comp. §§ 17, 18); the former are wisdom, science,
understanding and, connected therewith, prudence, and, in a somewhat
peculiar sense, also art-skill. The moral virtues relate to desire;
they fall into four cardinal virtues (ii, 1, qu. 60, 61; ii, 2, 47 sqq).
(1) Virtue considered as a good of the reason, and as expressing the
essence of the same, is prudence; this virtue is, as distinguished from
wisdom, not the lord, but the servant of morality,—gives not the end
proper, but only the means to the end of the practical reason. (2) The
virtue which expresses the practical will-direction of the reason toward
moral actions, is justness or righteousness; it relates to the realizing
of the right,—is the constant and fixed will to give to each his right,
and hence has to do with what we owe to others. It is true, man can
in a certain sense be just also toward himself, namely, when reason
holds in proper control the passions. Justness is the highest of the
moral virtues, and includes in itself also piety, thankfulness, etc.
(3) The virtue which expresses the practical will-direction of the reason
toward the checking of all reason-resisting desires and passions, is
temperateness. It holds within rational bounds all desires and pleasure-feelings
which relate to sensuous goods, and all displeasure-feelings which spring
from the lack of such goods. Modifications of this virtue are shame, reverentiality, abstinence, gentleness, modesty, humility, etc. (4)
The virtue which expresses the practical will-direction of the reason
toward the carrying-out of rational purposes as against opposing natural
inclinations and affections, especially against fear in the face of dangers,—is
courage. It wards off whatever would hinder the activity of the reason, and thus
preserves man, as against all
Above all the moral virtues, stand (not as co-ordinate therewith, but
as in fact exalting them into a Christian character) the theological
virtues, that is, the supernatural ones—those which have for their object
the divine, the supernatural, and are not grounded in us by nature,
but given (infusae) to us by God (ii, 1, 62 sqq.; ii, 2, 1-46); through
these alone is perfection possible to man, even in the other or moral
virtues.(1) Faith; this virtue relates not to the finite, but to God,
and has as its presupposition, divine revelation. It is a thinking
with an inner assent of the will, and must manifest itself also outwardly
in confession. The object of faith is, in part, purely supernatural,
transcending our knowledge and reason, and in part it can be discovered
even through natural reason; but also that which is discoverable through
reason has in fact been revealed by God out of love, and for purposes
of culture. Faith is raised to a vital form only by the increment of
love (fides formata); without love it is crude (informis). As faith
is the foundation of all morality, so is unbelief the greatest sin;
but as faith is a virtue, hence it is not allowable to bring a non-Christian
to faith by force. The matter is, however, very different with heretics
and apostates, for these have broken their vow, and hence fall under
punishment; heresy deserves capital punishment (ii, 2, 10, art. 8,
9); and when a prince falls from faith and in consequence thereof,
incurs the: ban of the Church, then are his subjects ipso facto free
and absolved from his dominions and from their oath of fealty (ii, 2,
12, art. 2),—(2) Hope has for its object eternal blessedness, that is,
the subjective phase of the highest good; it pre-supposes faith inasmuch
as it is only by faith that eternal blessedness becomes known to us.
With hope must be associated God-fearing, inasmuch as God
This double classification of the virtues is doubtless
the weakest side of the ethics of Thomas Aquinas and of the schoolmen
in general. The theological and the natural virtues do not possibly
admit of being brought into any clear relation to each other; they are
based upon two utterly foreign and heterogeneous stand-points, and can
be reduced neither to a condition of co-ordination nor of- subordination,
but on the contrary, they constantly cross and cramp each other, and
lead, on the one hand, to many repetitions, and, on the other, to an
arbitrary distribution of the special virtue-manifestations. That love,
even love to the creature, should appear solely as a theological virtue,
is entirely unnatural. The separating of faith from wisdom is no less
erroneous, inasmuch as Christian wisdom rests essentially on faith in
God. The distinction made between knowledge-virtues and moral virtues
suffers not only under all the defects of its prototype in Aristotle,
but becomes more perplexed still by the distinguishing of both these
classes from the theological virtues, inasmuch as a very essential part
of that which Aristotle ascribes to wisdom must here be transferred
to faith. And the matter is made still worse by the fact that the moral
virtues are not
On the virtues in general, Thomas Aquinas makes also the following observations, mostly in the spirit of Aristotle: every virtue is heightened in its power by exercise; all of them stand in connection with each other, and when they appear in their perfection, no one of them is without all the others. The virtues, according as they are viewed under different aspects, are, as to worth, in part equal and in part unequal; the knowledge-virtues are per se nobler than the moral virtues, inasmuch as reason is nobler than desire; but in respect to their activity, the moral virtues stand higher, as they are more fruitful in results. The perfect practice of virtue depends on the directly God-conferred seven gifts of the Spirit (ii, 1, 68), which make the person willing to follow the promptings of the Holy Spirit,—a thought which occurs already in Ambrose and in Gregory I., but in respect to which, even the intellectual acumen of a Thomas Aquinas does not succeed in making clear the relation of these gifts to the corresponding virtues; especially the theological.
The
moral activity determines itself according to a law; this law belongs
to the sphere of reason. The eternal law is the universe-ruling divine
reason, not the fortuitous reason of the individual. The laws of nature,
and also those of the practical reason (ratio practica) are an efflux
from the eternal
Opposed to the morally-good
stands evil; to the virtuous act, sin; and to virtue as a habit,
vice
(ii, 1, 71 sqq.); sin and vice are in contradiction to true reason,
and hence in general to the essence or nature of man. In reference
to the kind of pleasure felt or sought in sin, sins are divided into
spiritual and fleshly sins. In reference to their guilt and punishableness,
they are classed into venial and mortal (peccata venalia et mortalia);
the former consist in the turning to the finite without a conscious
and designed turning-away from God,
In his, not seldom very casuistical
carrying out of details, Thomas Aquinas, notwithstanding his moral earnestness,
does not, on the whole, incline to theoretical rigor, but leaves pretty
free scope for personal determination in particular cases, and even
in the face of outward human law. The right of property, for example,
is, in his opinion, not unconditional; and in extreme cases of necessity,
where the saving of life is involved, the right of self-preservation
takes precedence
Duns Scotus (ob. 1308), whose really speculative acumen went but
too often astray into sophistical and skeptical reasonings, involved
the moral idea, and above all its special application, in more than
one respect, in uncertainty, namely, by his sophist-delight in the discovering
and in the ingenious solving of contradictions and difficulties. A minutely
spun-out quatenus makes room for the most opposite assumptions, and
opens the way, to subjective discretion, for a lax construing of the
law. Many elements in Scotus remind us strikingly of the later aberrations
of the Jesuitical view. The notion of the freedom of the will he conceives,
in opposition to Thomas Aquinas, as essentially a mere norm-less discretion,
both in man and in God; while Aquinas held that man, as really rational,
has, in his rational knowledge of the good, a motive—not a compelling
one, it is true, but a motive—to the good, so that he cannot determine
himself equally easily for the rational and the irrational, but has
in fact a primitive, a constitutional inclination to the good, and that
consequently the will does not by any means stand entirely neutral (ii,
1, 9, 13, 17, 58), Duns Scotus maintains, on the contrary, that according
to this view the will is not at all free, but is determined by knowledge;
according to his
Quaestt. in libr. Sentent. ii, dist. 25, ed. Lugd., 1639, t.
6, p. 873 sqq. Ibid. iii, dist. 37, t. 7, p. 857. Ibid. ii, dist.
41. Ibid. iii, dist. 38, p. 917. Ibid. iii, dist. 39, p. 980.
Scholastic ethics as a whole bears a pretty unvarying outward
form. The method is, as the several points present themselves, first,
to state the various opposing views with the reasons in their favor,
and then to pass a decision upon the point itself; mere dicta of the
Fathers, especially of Augustine and of Dionysius the Areopagite, and
often also of the Philosophus, that is, Aristotle, suffice in and of
themselves as conclusive proofs; texts from the Scriptures fall rather
into
The ethical subject-matter treated
of by the schoolmen was subsequently wrought over in large, though but
little systemetized summaries in connection with appropriate citations
from the Fathers, and placed within reach of the wider circles of the
ecclesiastical world. To the period of Thomas Aquinas himself belongs
the Summa of William Peraldus, Summa s. tractatius de virtutibus et vitiis, from
the fifteenth century, (without date or place of printing, then at Col.
Agr., 1479 fol.; Basle, 1497, 8vo.) often reprinted. Not in his Opp., 1481, but separately printed as
a part of the great Speculum naturale, etc., 1473, and subsequently. Summa theol., 1477, 1478, 1480, 1496; 1740, 4 vols.
John of Salisbury (ob. 1180, as Bishop of Chartres), who
opposed scholasticism proper with brilliant ability, but was rather
empirical in regard to the source of knowledge, though in other respects
of rich philosophical culture, undertook to give to the moral views
of the Church a scientific expression; in his efforts he based himself
most largely on Gregory the Great. To be perfect is God’s essence, to
become perfect is the task of man as God’s image; man becomes perfect,
and hence happy only by moral activity,—which activity rests, on the
one hand, on the knowledge of the truth, and, on the other, on love
to God. Since the fall into sin man can know the truth only in virtue
of divine revelation and illumination, and he can realize the good only
by the assistance of divine grace. Because of the evil desire inborn
in all men, there is no virtue without a constant struggle of our love
to righteousness, as strengthened by redemption, against our innate
evil desires. Even as the essence and source of all sins is the natural
desire as developed into pride and presumption (so that consequently
all virtuous effort directs itself primarily against the pride of the
heart), so the essence of all Christian virtue is that humility which
springs from love to God, and which seeks to lay aside all self-will
and to give God the glory in all things. Hence the moral worth of actions
lies not in the work, but in the disposition; but from the right disposition
there follows with moral necessity also the right work.—Morality is
not, however, a merely individual task, it finds its full truth only
in the moral community-life, which comes to expression in the church
and in the closely therewith-connected Christian state. The State has,
as a real moral organism, also a moral task, namely, to execute righteousness
according to the divine will, and not only to protect the morality of
the people, but also to foster and guide it. Hence the law which governs
the state is to be
Especially in his Policraticus.—(Reuter:
The fondness of Schoolmen for
proposing difficult controversial questions led them inevitably into
the province of casuistry; and this science—which had sustained itself
alongside of scholasticism—subsequently borrowed from scholastic science
much congenial material, and in part also a scientific form. Hence at
the decline of scholasticism in the fourteenth century, casuistry entered
in fact upon its brightest days.
Summa de casibus
poenitentiae, Verona, 1744; upon this is based the work of John
of Freiburg, Augsb., 1472, and frequently. S. d. cas. consc. (at first
without date or place) about 1468-72 fol.; then at Col., 1479; Norimb.,
1482, and often later. S. cas. consc., 1486 without place, fol.; Venet.,
1487 4to.; Norimb., 1488, and often. Printed in 1515 4to.; Argent.,
1518 fol.
The writings of the Mystics contain in the field of ethics many profound thoughts, though without rigidly scientific form. This is the case with Richard of St. Victor and Bonaventura. Less mystical than simply practical, and strongly emphasizing the subjective phase of morality, was the influence of Bernard of Clairvaux, and later, of Thomas à Kempis; while Eckart, and in part even Tauler, conceive the moral in the main negatively and quietistically (in the spirit of a Pantheistically-infected mysticism) as spiritual poverty,, as the turning-away of the spirit from all that is created. Occupying a mediating position between mysticism and scholasticism, also John Gerson seeks to give form to ethics, but he already begins to show signs of that paralysis of the moral spirit which had spread into the widest circles previously to the Reformation; Raymund de Sabunde deals in more popularly-practical modes of thought. In the spirit of the Reformation, and as its precursors, worked, in the field of ethics, also Wickliffe, Huss, John of Goch, and Savonarola.
In contrast to the growingly-Aristotelian,
dialectical treatment of ethics, the mystical anti-scholastic current
of theology clings, more or less closely, to the writings of the supposed
Areopagite (§ 31), but keeps for the most part clear from the daring
speculations of John Scotus Erigena, and gives, in general, thoughtful
meditations and profound glances of insight rather than rigorous and
clear processes of reasoning. The freedom of the will is, by most of
the Mediaeval mystics, pretty strongly emphasized; but the active working
Richard of St. Victor (about
1150) treats, in several special works, of the inner life of the pious
heart in its union with God,—a life which through contemplatio as
distinguished from cogitatio and
meditatio, passes over into self-forgetting
love. The divine is not attained to by laborious thinking and doing,
but by an immediate and spiritual, freely self-devoting vision or beholding,
to which receptive state of the soul God lovingly manifests himself
as in-streaming light. And the soul becomes receptive by the progressive
cleansing of it from the dross of the earthly life, from the striving
after the creature,—by self-immersion into itself, not in order to
hold fast to itself in antithesis to God, but in order to aspire toward
him in ardent love-desire; the goal is perfect, blissful rest in God;
the condition is the operation of grace and the willing, joyous laying-hold
upon the same on the part of the subject.—Bonaventura (ob. 1274) attempts
to fuse dialectics with mysticism, but, notwithstanding his frequently
almost overflowing subjectivity of feeling, his mysticism is less sustained
and less deep than that of Richard St. Victor, and lingers more in the
sphere of practical piety.—Bernard of Clairvaux (ob. 1153),—opposing
scholasticism in many respects not without good grounds, and confining
himself mainly to the practical sphere,—has also carefully examined
the subject of ethics in some of its parts; (De diligendo deo; De gradibus
humilitatis et superb.; De gratia et libero arbitrio; De consideratione.)
To true virtue belong two things: divine grace and a free, active embracing
of the same; without freedom there is no responsibility. But freedom
is threefold: first, freedom of nature as opposed to necessity; second,
freedom of grace,—attained to through Christ,—that is, emancipation
from the bondage of sin; and, third, freedom of glory which is realized
in eternal blessedness, but enjoyed here only in moments of spiritual
vision. Freedom of choice is from nature, but by grace it is regulated
and attracted toward the good, though not forced. By simple free-will
we belong to ourselves; by the willing of the good we belong to God;
by the willing of evil, to Satan. The decision lies in our own hand;
no one is forced to salvation. Love, as constituting
Master Eckart (a Dominican at
Cologne, ob. 1329), Schriften, edited by Pfeiffer, 1847,—(mostly sermons; larger scientific
works of his appear to be lost. C. Schmidt in Stud. u. Krit., 1839;
Martensen, 1842; J. Back, 1864.
In a similar spirit, although less bold in emphasizing
the mystical element, wrote and lived Tauler, Eckart’s disciple (a Dominican
at Cologne and Strasburg, ob. 1361). He presented, in his “Imitation
of the humble Life of Christ,” Edited by Schlosser, 1833 (in
modern German); his sermons are mostly practico-edificatory. The work,
Medulla animae, is not by Tauler C. Schmidt: J. Tauler, 1841.
The comprehensiveness of a Gerson
(ob. 1429) could not bring to a check the decline of the inner spirit
of the church, which was now seriously affecting also the general moral
consciousness. Scholasticism and casuistry had, by their interminable
subtleties;. largely obscured the more simple moral modes of thought-;:
and while puzzling themselves in fruitless speculation over the imaginary
difficulties of cunningly-invented cases of conscience, they lost all
sense for moral straightforwardness; and found abundant pretexts for
making exceptions from the moral rule. The Franciscan, Jean Petit of
Paris, was able, on occasion of the murder of the regent, the Duke of
Orleans, in 1407, to find reasons for openly justifying the murder of
tyrants, and the Council of Constance did not venture to pronounce
a decided disapproval of this doctrine; and not only that, but it gave,
for the first
Marheinecke: Gesch. d. christl Moral, etc., 1806, p. 161
sqq.; Stäudlin: Gesch. d. ch. Mor. seit. d. Wiederaufl., etc., p. 63 sqq.;
Wessenberg: Kirschenversamml., 2, 247. Opp., Antv., 1706, t. iii,
917 sqq.
Thomas
à Kempis (ob. 1471), the author of the most widely known of all books
of devotion: De imitatione Christi (translated into all European languages,
and published nearly two thousand times), shows himself in this book
as a thoroughly practical, moderated mystic, of deep moral life-experience,
and of genuine, heart-felt, morally-vigorous piety; and hence his work
is not less prized in the Protestant than in the Romish church. The
thoughts are presented in a clear, genuinely-popular style, and the
rich heart-depth is thereby thrown all the more brightly into relief.—The
book known as German Theology, published first by Luther in 1516, but
springing from an unknown author of the fifteenth century, is based
on Tauler, and is characterized by a somewhat more strongly speculative
mysticism than that of Kempis,—emphasizing in an almost one-sided manner
the turning-away from self and from the world, and the becoming united
with
Less peculiar in contents
than in form, and differing equally from scholasticism and from mysticism,
are the moral views of Raymund de Sabunde (of Toulouse, about 1430). Theologia
naturalis, Solisb., 1852.—Matzke: R. v. S., 1816.
The evangelical
tendency which during the time of the
De corrupto eccl. statu, and in briefer essays and letters,
Opp.,
1613. Ullmann: Reformatoren vor d. Ref., 1841, i. Rudelbach:
Sav.,
1835; F. C. Meier, 1836.
If we leave out of view these teachers of the church who were forerunners of the Reformation, we find in general in the ecclesiastical ethics prevailing before the opening of this Reformation a threefold character: a casuistical, a scholastic, and a mystical one, corresponding to the three phases of the soul-life, namely, to the empirical understanding, to the speculative reason and to the loving heart. The mystical form of ethics is the pure antithesis to the casuistical; the former rests on heart-union with God, the latter on the analyzing understanding; the former, upon an inward ineffable vision, the latter, upon outward calculating observation; the former strays at times int6 the borders of Pantheism, and hence has some points of contact with the cosmic theory of India; the. latter is rather in danger of repeating, in the Christian sphere, the Jewish externality and chicanery of Pharisaism and Talmudism;—the former reduces all plurality, all heterogeneousness, to a homogeneous unity,—endangers the practically moral working-life in the world; the latter dissolves the moral idea into an atomistic plurality of single cases devoid of uniting bond;—mysticism turns itself away disdainfully from all objective reality even of the moral life; casuistry threatens to bind up and to smother the moral in narrow legal forms; mysticism turns away from the circumference toward the center, but does not return again from the center to the circumference; casuistry proceeds and stumbles by a reverse course;-the former tends to a lightly-esteeming of the active life, the latter to a hypocritical and external work-holiness. Speculative ethics, especially in Thomas Aquinas, stands higher than in either of the other two forms, but lacks too much in evangelical directness and simplicity; and because of its double dependence on Greek ethics, on the one hand, and on the evangelical church-creed, on the other, it has not only compromised its legitimate and essential freedom, but, at the same time, also its truth. Notwithstanding this, however, it stands (especially in its highest perfection in Thomas Aquinas) far more closely to the evangelical consciousness than the later form of Roman Catholic ethics as presented by the zealous champion of the Romish church, the Jesuits.
The antagonism of the evangelical ground-thought to that of Romanism
manifested itself also in ethics. In the evangelical or Protestant church
the sinful corruption of the natural man was conceived much more deeply,
and consequently the moral task of the Christian much more earnestly;
and, as a consequence of the impossibility of meriting salvation by
our works, Christian virtue was conceived, in much greater freedom from
self-seeking, as the-simple fruit of faith; and the notion of supererogatory
works became impossible in view of the decided recognition, that the life even
of the most holy always falls short of moral perfection. The Scriptural view
excludes a very essential portion of Romish ethics from that of the evangelical
church. Comp. H. Merz: System der christl. Sittenlehre in seiner Gestaltung
nach den Grundsetzen des Protestantismus im Gegensatze zum Katholicismus,
Tüb., 1841,—ingenious, but prepossessed by speculative theories, and
doing injustice to both sides.
The semi-Pelagian enfeebling of the effects of sin that prevailed in the Romish church, deprived ethics of its proper deep-reaching foundation. The more deeply the moral corruption of man is conceived of, so much the greater becomes also the significancy of redemption, and likewise also of the moral struggle of the regenerated Christian against sin. Hence the, at first thought, surprising phenomenon that the rigid predestinarianism of Calvin did not lead to a decline in moral effort, but on the contrary to a very vigorous moral life. In the deep earnestness of their conception of the moral task, both evangelical churches, the Lutheran and the Reformed, stand alike.
The
Holy Scriptures are the sole fountain of Christian ethics, just as,
living faith in Christ as the sole cause of salvation, is
Evangelical ethics is therefore apparently much less comprehensive in its subject-matter than that of the Ronlish church,—treats a not inconsiderable portion of the latter merely condemnatorily, as, e. g., the entire subject of asceticism, and of opera supererogatoria as fulfilling the counsels; on the other hand, however, it has a deeper ground and a higher earnestness. Romish asceticism simply hides from view the inner lack of a truly evangelically moral depth. He who has understood the entire and profound earnestness of the moral life-task, and is conscious, how far the reality still falls below the moral prototype, can never come upon the thought of attempting, in addition to the moral task proposed to us by God, to perform still other additional works, in order to attain to a still higher degree of sanctity. All these self-imposed works are really an implication that God placed the moral goal of man too low, and that He is thankfully pleased to accept the voluntary and non-owed over-payment of those who feel themselves superior to the ordinary assessment.
The Reformers themselves treat the moral contents of the Christian consciousness for the most part only practically; Melanchthon. develops in his Loci merely the ground-thoughts, though he also attempts, on the basis of Aristotle, a philosophical establishing of the foundations of ethics; Calvin gives only brief outlines, independently of the earlier scholastic method. The antithesis of the two evangelical churches manifested itself also in wide-reaching differences of ethical views. As an independent theological science, ethics was somewhat earlier treated in the Reformed than in the Lutheran church. In the latter, it was at first either combined, in its mere ground-principles, with dogmatics, or treated merely practically and popularly; G. Calixtus, however, treated it as a science distinctly separate from dogmatics, though only in its scanty beginnings. From this time forward it was frequently treated independently, though for the most part, even as late as into the eighteenth century, only as casuistry; and Pietism, which embraced so earnestly the ethical contents of Christianity, although with some formal narrowness, prepared the way for a profounder scientific treatment of ethics.
Luther himself,
who embraced the evangelical ground-truths so clearly and distinctly,
was not called by the general scope of his activity to the preparing
of a system of scientific ethics proper. His warfare against Romish
work-holiness, and against the formal, subtle and freedom-hampering
casuistry of the Romanists, must have awakened in him a certain disinclination
to a rigidly-scientific development of ethics, and an anxiety lest such
a work might sink the free moral activity of the Christian
Of the chief Reformers, only Melanchthon,—who was of solid classic culture, and who gave proof, at the time of
his scientific maturity, both of decided fondness for, and of a thorough
understanding of, Aristotle,—indicated, in his theological writings
not only the ground-thoughts of evangelical ethics, but gave even the
outlines of a system of philosophical ethics. Besides his valuable comments
on the Ethics and Politics of Aristotle, In Ethica Arist. comment., 1529,
treating only the 1st and 2d books; in 1532 were added the 3d and 5th;
re-written in 1545 as Enarratio aliquot librorum Eth. Ar., etc.,—in
the Corpus Reformatorum of Bretschneider and Bindseil, t. xvi, p.
277-416.—Comment. in aliquot politicos libros Aristot., 1530, in Corp.
Ref., ib., p. 417 sqq. Corp. Ref., xvi, pp. 21-164. The following
editions, 1539, ’40, are largely changed; three later ones, 1542-’46,
are like that of 1540. Corp. Ref., xvi, pp. 165-276; not printed in
the earlier Opp.
In his Loci Melanchthon gives the
general bases of the moral consciousness in strictly Biblical form [Loci
3-6; 8-11]. The Old Testament law is not identical with the eternal
moral law, but contains besides this law (which is indeed not fully
included in the Decalogue, but only indicated in its chief features)
also the ceremonial and the civil law, both of which had validity only
until the advent of Christianity. The moral law is the immediate and
pure expression of the divine wisdom and justness themselves, and hence
was not first given by Moses, but was always valid from the very beginning.
Melanchthon’s somewhat extensive examination of the several divine laws
in the order of the Decalogue, may serve in many respects to complement
his philosophical ethics. He writes, here, free from the cramping fetters
of the long-observed schemata, and reckons among the “works” of the
first commandment: a proper knowledge of God, God-fearing, faith, love,
hope, patience, and humility.
De conjugio;
quaestiones aliquot ethicae, de juramentis, etc., 1552; in Corp. Ref.,
xvi, 453 sqq. Consilia s. judicia theol., ed. Pezellii. 1660.
In his scientific
conception of the ethical task, Melanchthon furnishes an essential complement
to that of Luther, who fixed his attention simply on the fact of the
moral life of the regenerated as such, without shaping the development
of this fact out of the inner heart of the Christian life, into an ethical
science. Melanchthon himself, however, did not complete this task,
but simply began it; and although we find in him frequently a slight
over-estimation of Aristotle, still we perceive in the vigorous manner
in which, in his last ethical writings, he breaks loose from all cramping
and foreign forms and thoughts, and lays an entirely new, purely Christian
foundation, how clearly he comprehended his task,—the carrying-out of
which was delayed by the soon-following inner struggles of the evangelical
church; only a few writers—Chytraeus, Victorin Strigel and Nicholas
Hemming—followed, in, as yet, feeble attempts, upon the path marked
out by Melanchthon. J. C.
E. Schwarz in Stud. u. Krit., 1853; Pelt., ib., 1848.
The rigid predestinarianism of Calvin seems at
first thought still more unfavorable for the development of ethics than
the stand-point of Luther; in reality, however, the Reformed church
developed an independent system of ethics earlier than the Lutheran. The juridically-dialectic ground-character of the Calvinistic world-conception
necessarily led sooner than the more mystically-inclined subjective
Lutheran view, to a rigorous development of the practical phase of religion.
In his Institutio [iii, 6-10] Calvin gives a short, plainly-biblical
presentation of the bases of Christian morality,—which, of course, can
be actually practiced only by the predestinated, but which is however for them, as being called to
purity, an unconditional duty. That virtue cannot actually obtain for
us salvation—communion with God—but is simply the necessary fruit of
the salvation already obtained by grace, and the constant bond of this
communion as established by grace, Calvin affirms very definitely. Therein,
precisely, consists, in his view, the essential superiority of Christian
to philosophical ethics, namely, that the former gives much deeper-reaching
motives for the good than the latter, to wit, thankful love in return
for God’s love as revealed in redemption, and confiding love to the
Redeemer, in whom we have at the same time the perfect personal pattern
of the moral life. Out of this love to God in Christ flows a love of
justness or righteousness (in the Biblical sense of the word) as the
basis of the entire religious life. But the essence of Christian righteousness
consists in perfect self-denial, that is, in the renunciation of all
self-will and self-reason as opposed to God,—in an unreserved surrender
to God and his will; it draws us away from love to the world, but must
not sink into self-mortification and false asceticism. Man must not,
by arbitrary non-Scriptural ordinances, impose upon himself a yoke.
The moral life manifests itself [according to
In all essential points the ethical systems of the Reformed
Comp. Schneckenburger:
Vegleichende
Darstellung des luth. u. ref. Lehrbegriffs, 1855; Tholuck: Das kirchl.
Leben des 17 Jahrh., i, 199 sqq., 218 sqq., 301 sqq.; ii, 140 sqq.,
239 sqq.
The theological ethics of the evangelical church was
treated as a separate science, On the history of the earlier Reformed
ethics, see Schweizer in Stud. u. Krit., 1850. Systema ethicae in
his Opp., 1614. Medulla theologiae, 1630, and frequently, a brief
compendium; De conscientiae et ej. jure vel casibus, 1630, and subsequently,—casuistical. Syntagma theol., 1610. La morale chrestienne, 1652 sqq., 6 t.,—rare
in Germany; see Stäudlin iv, 404 sqq.; Schweizer in Stud. u. Krit.,
1683. Opp., Amst., 1703.
In the Lutheran church there was at first but little done beyond
the already-mentioned further developments of the philosophical ethics
of Melanchthon, with the exception of a single, though not purely theological,
attempt of the Melanchthonian Hamburger, Von Eitzen: Comp. Pelt in
Stud. u. Krit., 1848. Enchiridion theol. mor., 1662; later as: Compend., 1675-98 4to. Introd. in univ.
theol. mor. studium, 1671. And as the beginning of a development of
ethics itself: Disputt. theol., 1679.
The ethics of the Lutheran church was treated more frequently casuistically
than in a systematic form; it bore this character even as late as into
the eighteenth century, and forms, properly speaking, only an amassment
of material for a subsequent scientific development. As occasioned by
the casuistry of the Romish church, the casuistry of the evangelical
church, in express antithesis thereto, manifests, on the basis of Scripture
and of spiritual experience, a greater certainty and simplicity, and
preserves a middle-ground between the sophistical laxity of the Jesuitical
view and the rigid severity of the Calvinistic. Many of these works
contain also many dogmatic questions together with their decisions.
The distribution of the subject-matter follows, for the
Tactatus luculentus, etc., 1628, ’35, and
later. Introd. brevis in theol. casuisticam, 1694. Liber conscientiae,
2 ed. 1679, 2 t., and Theologia casualis, 1706. Casus consc., Altdorf,
1676, 4to. Theol. casualis, 1680, 6 t., 4to.
Also the theological “Bedenken” of the
eighteenth century belong to the sphere of this casuistical ethics.
Among these works those of Spener occupy a peculiar and significant
place, and constitute, together with his other more or less ethical
writings, a turning-point in the development of the evangelical moral
consciousness. Their significancy rests less in their single judgments
than in their peculiar ground-thoughts. Spener,—who was imbued with
the spirit of Thomas à Kempis, of Andreae and of Arndt, and in part,
even of Tauler, and who restlessly labored in the path trod by these
men for a moral bettering of the Christian church,—called forth by the
Pietism which proceeded from him, a deep-reaching, beneficent movement
in the moral life and in the moral views of the evangelical church,
although indeed in consequence of his one-sided emphasizing of the practical,
he treated science itself somewhat too lightly, and set too high an
estimate on certain outward forms of devout morality, and thus needlessly
limited the legitimate liberty of a regenerated Christian. Spener’s Pia desideria Appearing first in 1675 as a preface to Arndt’s
Postille, afterward
separately,—often printed. Theologische
Bedenken, 1700, 1712, 4 vols.; Letzte theol. Bedenken, 1711, 3 vols.;
Consilia et judicia theol., 1709, 3 vols., and many other smaller works.
The ethics of the Roman Catholic church, after the
Reformation, was treated for the most part as a constantly increasing
and more minute-growing body of casuistry. The highest development of
the same, and at the same time the greatest perversion of Christian
ethics, also in regard to its moral contents, appeared in the semi-Pelagianizing
ethics of the Jesuits. The place of the unconditional validity of the
moral idea is here largely usurped by outward adaptability to the weal
of the visible church, as the highest end; the place of the unshaken
authority of the Scriptures and of early Christian tradition, by the
authority of certain special Doctors; the place of moral conviction,
by probabilism; the place of moral honesty, by a sophistical construing
of the moral law to the present fortuitous advantage of the church
and of the individual, and by the falsehood of reservationes mentales;
and the place of the moral conscience, by
At first thought we are surprised at the exceeding fruitfulness of the
Romish theology of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in ethical
writings, in comparison with which the evangelical church, and especially
the Lutheran, is very barren. Opposition to the faith-principle of the
Evangelical church, led the Romish church to an especial development
of the practical phase of religion, as in fact, in the order of the
Jesuits, a vigor of activity hitherto unknown in the Romish church makes
at this time its appearance; and precisely this order was the chief
representative of Romish ethics.—The more purely scientific form of ethics
lingered in general strictly within the limits of the scholastico-Aristotelian
rut. Francis Piccolomini, a much-lauded Aristotelian, in Italy (ob. 1604)
produced a comprehensive and discursive moral philosophy Universa philosophia
moribus, Venet. 1583; Frkf., 1595,
1629.
The Order of the
Jesuits, as calculated in its very nature for action, for the championship
of the endangered Romish church, was called by its fundamental principle
to the development of a special system of morality,—a system the highest
end of which is the glory of God through the exaltation of the visible
church. The majority of the Jesuitical presentations of ethics treat,
for the most part, only of the more or less classified circle of single
cases, while the more rare systematic works follow very closely the
traditions of scholasticism. Perrault: Morale des Jes., 1667, 3t.; Ellendorf:
Die Moral
und Politik des Jesuiten, 1840—not sufficiently scientific; Pragm.
Gesch. d. Mönschsorden, 1770, vols. 9 and 10. Genuae, 1592? 1602; Antv. 1607, 1612, 1614, 1617, 3 fol.; Norimb.
1706; the first edition has become rare; in the later editions, after
1612, the smuttiest passages are omitted or modified. Rewritten and
enlarged by Lacroix, 1710, 9t.,
The peculiar character of Jesuitical
ethics rests on the fundamental purpose of the order as a whole, namely,
the rescuing of the Church, the bride of Christ, as endangered by the
Reformation in its very foundations, and hence the rescuing of the honor
of God from a most pressing danger. In a struggle of life and death
one is not very careful in the choice of means, and in all warfare the
sentiment holds good, though involving manifold violations of ordinary
right, that the end sanctifies the means. The rescuing of the Romish
church at any price is the task, even should it involve an entering
into alliance with the dark powers of this sinful world, and with the
passions and sinful proclivities of the unsanctified multitude. The
one
This, then, is
the distinguishing characteristic of Jesuitical ethics,—that in the
place of the eternal objective ground and criterion of the moral, it
substitutes subjective opinion, and in the place of an unconditional
eternal end, a merely conditionally valid one, namely, the defending
of the actual, visible church against all forms of opposition,—that
in the place of the moral conscience, it substitutes the human calculating
of circumstantial and fortuitous adaptation to the promotion of this
its highest end,—that it attempts to realize that which is per se and
absolutely valid by a wide-reaching isolating of the means, but in so
doing subordinates morality to the discretion of the single subject.—While
the ethics of the Jesuits appears
Filliucci:
Moral. quaest., I, trac. 6 c. 7; Escobar: Liber th., VII, 4 c. 7 (especially
n. 181, 182), comp. Ellendorf, 263 ssq., 312 ssq.
The development of Jesuitical
ethics is by no means a phenomenon essentially new; the bases therefor
were already long extant; it is only a further building upon the same
foundations. The Pelagianizing view of the moral ability of the human
will and of the meritoriousness of outward works lay already at the
basis of the entire system of monkish holiness, and the Jesuits went
only one step further when they, in contradiction to Thomas Aquinas,
taught often almost entirely as Pelagius. The earlier casuistry in its
lack of fixed principles had already shaken the moral foundation; and
the too great indulgence in sophistry on particular, and, in part, entirely
imaginary, cases, had beclouded the unsophisticated moral consciousness;
the doctrine of probabilism had been already sanctioned at Constance,
and in many respects practically applied. The entanglement of the church
with the then so manifoldly-complicated state of European politics,
with worldly passions and rancors, and its very worldly struggles against
the worldly state, had already long since undermined the purity of the
ecclesiastical conscience, and the maxim, that the end sanctifies the
means, had already been long practiced and approved by the church before
it was, by the Jesuits (if not sanctioned in express words,
The chief means used for the purpose
of lightening moral duty was the so-called moral probabilism, namely,
the principle that in morally-doubtful cases the authority of a few
eminent church-teachers, or also even of a single one (if he is a
doctor
gravis et probus), suffices to furnish a sententia probabilis as to
a moral course of action, and hence to justify the performing of it,
even if the opinion followed were per se false; nay, according to some,
even if this teacher himself had declared it as only morally possible,
without really approving of it. Hence, as soon as I can hunt up for
an action which seems to me of doubtful propriety, or even positively
wrong, a consenting opinion of an ecclesiastical authority (and of course
it is best if I find it among the Jesuit doctors themselves), then am
I perfectly screened by the same; Laymann:
Theol. mor. 1625, i, p. 9; Escobar: Liber h., prooem., exam. 3; Bresser:
De consc. iii, c. 1 sq., and in almost all the others. Quia ex opinionum
varietate jugum Christi suavita sustinetur (Univ. theol. mor., t.
i, lib. 2, 1, c. 2 in Crome, x, 182.) Wolf: Gesch. d. Jesuit., 1,
173.
Probabilism
is not a merely fortuitously discovered expedient, but it is in fact
an almost inevitable consequence of the historical essence of Jesuitism.
As the order itself arose neither on the basis of Scripture nor of ancient
church-tradition, but sprang absolutely from the daring inventive power
of a single man breaking through the limits of ecclesiastical actuality,
hence it is not at all unnatural that it should make the authority of
a single spiritually preeminent man its highest determining power, and
subordinate to this the historical, objective form of the moral consciousness.
When the learned moralists came to be regarded as the determining authority
in morals, then the Jesuits were the masters of the world, for they
were themselves the most excellent doctors. Though they absolved the
inquirer from so many burdensome chains of commanding duty, though they
led him in the selection between opposed authorities to a subjective
discretion of decision, yet at least this point was reached, that he
recognized the Jesuit priests as his liberating masters. The doctrine
of probabilism can by no means be explained as a simple sequence of
the Romish tradition-principle; for here the deciding element is not
the authority of the church, but simply individual teachers and in fact
not, the majority of authorities, but it is expressly permitted to follow Escobar:
Th. mor., prooeem., iii, n. 9, and many others. Sanchez:
Op. mor., i, 9, n. 12 sqq., n. 24. Escobar: Th. mor. prooem., iii, n. 27; Laymann,
i, p. 12; so also Diana: Resol. mor., ii, tract., 13,11 sqq., Antv.,
1637; Summa, 1652, p. 216. Laymann, i, p. 11.
Though probabilism per se, as a mere formal principle, endangers morality in a high degree, substituting in the place of the moral conscience individual and arbitrary authority, and rocking the soul into false security, still it were possible that the danger of this principle should not actually realize itself, in that it might be presupposed that the theological authorities would, in all essential moral thoughts, harmonize with each other and with the Scriptures, and would show some difference only in regard to more external, unimportant questions. In this case the erroneousness of the formal principle would in some measure be remedied by the correctness of the material contents. The question rises therefore: What do the doctors who are presented as moral oracles, positively teach as to the moral?
One would be largely deceived were one to expect to find in the
moral writings in question merely the loose world-morality of moral indifference,
selfishness, and pleasure-seeking; on the contrary, they often present
anxiously, minute
Escobar: i, 2, n. 7 sqq.; v, 4, n. 1 sqq. Defensio virtutis,
i, 1. Diana: Resol. mor. i, tract., 4, 4, 5.
In respect to moral
imputation and condemnation, most of the teachers make—in view of rendering
moral desert easy—the remarkable distinction, that the action answering
to the divine law is good and meritorious as such, without it being
requisite thereto that the intention should be good; and that, on the
contrary, sin exists only where there is really an intention of sinning.
Hence if the intention is a good one, that is, promotive of the weal
of the church, then the act which serves to its carrying-out cannot
be sinful; and there can be a mortal sin only where the person in the
moment of the act had the definite intention of doing evil, and a perfect
knowledge of the same. But passion and evil habit becloud one’s knowledge
and hence render the sin venial, as does also weighty evil example; E. g., Laymann: i, 2, c. 3; i, 9, 3; Escob.: i, 3,
n. 28; Conseuetudo absque advertentia letale peccatum non facit. Escobar: Tr. 7, 4, c. 7.
Not undeserved is the notoriety of the
chapters in Jesuitical ethics on falsehood, on the sexual sin, and on
murder. One may intentionally use ambiguous words in one sense though
knowing that the hearer understands him otherwise; and one may for a
legitimate end, e. g., for self-defense, or to protect one’s family,
or to practice a virtue, utter words, which, as uttered, are entirely
false, and which express the true sense (which may be the opposite to
the sense really expressed) only through mental additions restrictio
s. reservatio mentalis); of such cases the moralists abound in remarkable
illustrations; Sanchez: Opus mor., iii, 6, 12 sqq.; Summa: i,
3, 6; Diana: ii, tr. 15, 25 sqq.; iii, tr. 6, 30, where many cases are
cited and approved; Ellendorf: pp. 42 sqq., 52 sqq., 124 sqq., 157 sqq.;
Crome: x, 142 sqq.
Escobar: iii, 3,
n. 48. Ibid., i, 3, n. 31. Compare Diana: iii, t. 5,100
sqq.
The sexual relations are discussed by the Jesuits in a so immorally-detailed circumstantiality that the laxity of moral judgment (elsewhere without
parallel) is rendered thereby all the more pernicious and condemnable. Escobar:
i, 8; v, 2; Busenbaum: iii, 4; especially Sanchez; De matrim.; so also
Diana; comp. Ellendorf: 30 sqq., 95 sqq., 288 sqq., 331 sqq. Escobar:
Liber, etc., princ. ii, n. 41; so also Bauny. E. g., Diana: ii, t.
16, 54; 17, 62 ssq.; iii, 5, 87 sqq.; iv, 4, 36, 37,—in the spirit of
many of the Jesuits. Especially Escobar: i, 7; comp. Ellendorf: 72
sqq. Sanchez: Summa, t. i, 2, 39, 7; Amicus:
De jure et justitia,
v, sec. 7, 118; comp. Diana: iii, tr. 5, 97, ed. Antv. 1637. Sanchez: Opus mor. ii,
39, 7. Crome, x, 229; Escobar, i, 7, n. 59, 64. In Escobar: Princ.
iii, n. 25,—who, however, himself disapproves thereof. Perrault, ii,
304 sqq.; Stäudlin, 503; Ellendorf, 360 sqq.
The maxims
of the Jesuits disseminated themselves like
Resolutiones morales, Antv., 1629-37, 4 fol., Lugd. 1667,
Venet., 1728. Res. mor., Antv., 1637, ii, tract. 13; iv,
tr. 3; Summa,
1652, p. 214. Ibid., iii, 5, 90;
Summa, pp. 210, 212. Res. mor.,
Antv., 1637, iii, tract. 5, 37. Ibid., ii, tract. 15, 17. Ibid.,
iii, tr. 6, 24. Ibid., iii, tr. 6, 45. Ibid., 6, 48. Resol.
mor., Antv., iii, 6, 81; in the spirit of Sanchez and Less. Ibid.,
iv, tr., 4, 94; sanctioned by several Jesuits. Theol. mor., 1645,
1652; the work itself I have not been able to find; comp. Perrault:
i, 331 sqq. Ibid., 1626. Disp., xi, 52, 171, 172, 183, (ed. Ven.
1723.) Ibid., viii, 27. Ibid., viii, 25, 28; xi, 110 sqq.
The moral system of the Jesuits is not,
strictly speaking, that of the Romish church; many of their more extreme
maxims the church has condemned, and the more recent Jesuits themselves
find it advisable no longer fully to avow their former principles.
Nevertheless Jesuitism, together with its system of morals, is the ultimate
consequential goal of the church in its turning-aside from the Gospel,
just as (though in other respects widely different therefrom) Talmudism
was the necessary goal of Judaism in its rejection of the Saviour. The
error consists in the placing of human discretion and authority in the
stead of the unconditionally valid, revealed will of God. Even as earlier
Catholicism had intensified the divine command by self-invented, ascetic
work-holiness into a seemingly greater severity,—had aimed
Other casuists are: Jacobus à Graffiis, a Benedictine (Consiliorum s. respons. cas. consc. 1610, 2, 4to.); Pontas of Paris (Examen general de conscience, 1728; Latin, 1731, 8 fol., alphabetical); the French bishop Genettus (ob. 1702, Theologie morale; also in Latin, 1706, 2, 4to., earnest and rigid); the Dominican Perazzo, in his Thomisticus ecclesiastes (1700, 3 fol.), digested the ethics of Thomas Aquinas into an alphabetical register; Malder of Antwerp treated it more systematically (De virtutibus theologicis, 1616).
In a more systematic form, a purer Christian spirit, and, in many respects, opposed to Jesuitical views, and corresponding rather to Mediaeval ethics, is the moral treatise of the French bishop Godeau (1709); Natalis Alexander (1693) treated the same subject in a similar spirit, in connection with dogmatics.
In striking antithesis to the morals of the Jesuits, stand the teachings of the Augustine-inspired Jansenists, who, in opposition to the subjectively-individual character of the Jesuitical system, hold fast to the immutable objectivity of the moral law, and teach the latter in a very rigid manner, much resembling that of Calvinists; but yet because of their leaning upon the earlier mysticism of the church they come short of carrying fully out the Reformatory principle.—The mystical theology—present in Jansenism only as a co-ordinate element—perpetuated itself in the Romish church, in natural antagonism to the cold casuistic morality of the Jesuits, but rather in a popularly devotional than in a scientific form, and rose, in the Quietism of Molinos, to a one-sided turning-aside from all vigorous moral activity, while Fenelon shaped a modified and moderated mysticism into a noble, moral system of devout contemplation.
Jansen of Louvain (afterward bishop of Ypres),
presses, in his Augustinus (1640), the doctrine of Augustine against
the semi-Pelagian system of the Jesuits, and occasioned thereby a powerful
theological movement which led almost to schism, and which demonstrated
again by historical results that even the most rigid teaching of predestination
brings about higher moral views than the doctrine of Pelagianism and
semi-Pelagianism,—and for this simple reason, that, in the former system
God is brought absolutely into the fore-ground, while, in the latter,
the individual subject is put forward into a false position. Love to
God and to his will is the essence of all morality; where God is not
loved in an action, there the action is not moral; mere love to created
things is sinful; but our love to God is poured out into our hearts
by God himself, and hence stands in need of grace, which inclines the
will directly and irresistibly to the working of the good.
Comp. Reuchlin: Geschichte von Portroyal, 1839,
and the same author’s Pascals Leben, 1840,—neither work entirely unprejudiced.
Kirchenhistor. Archiv. v. Stäudlin, etc., 1824, 1, 127.
The mystical current
of ethics, with which the Jansenists always manifested a sympathy, was
represented by Francis de Sales (bishop of Geneva, ob. 1622, and subsequently
canonized) in several works; Oeuvres, Paris, 1821, 16 t., 1834. Opp. theol., 1642, 1653. Manuductio ad coelum, 1664, and frequently;
Opp. Antv., 1673, 1739. Walch: Einl. in d. Rel. streit. ausser. d. ev. K., 1724, ii, p. 982; Stäudlin u. Tschirner:
Archiv., i, 2, 175. Walch: Einl. in d. Rel. streit. ausser. d. ev. K., 1724, ii, p. 982; Stäudlin u. Tschirner:
Archiv., i, 2, 175.
Independently
of the Reformation,—because averse to Christianity itself, and standing
rather in connection with the already previously existing breaking-loose
from the evangelically-moral consciousness which showed itself, as godlessness
on the one hand, and as humanism on the other,—there was developed,
in antithesis to the Christian religion and to Mediaeval philosophy
(as also in antithesis to the riper Greek philosophy, and consequently
to the historical spirit in general) an essentially new philosophical
movement, which, while moving forward under manifold modifications of
form, gradually won a progressively greater influence on theology, and
in fact chiefly also on theological ethics, leading the same astray,
on the one hand, into deep-reaching errors, but also, on the other (and
in fact because of these errors) bringing it to a riper self-examination
and to a clearer self-consciousness. Showing a preference,—in contrast
to the precedent of the better form of scholasticism,—to those ancient
moralists who already represented the decadence of Greek thought, namely,
to the Epicureans, the Stoics, and the Skeptics, or indeed also, merely
in a general way, to the so-called humanistic spirit of antiquity,—this
movement (which found favor especially in Italy and France, because
of the there-increasing demoralization of the higher classes), shows
itself at first, for the most part, simply in the
It is utterly incorrect and anti-historical to deduce the collective,
and (as some have done) even the anti-Christian philosophy of modern
times from the Reformation, or even to regard it as standing in any
close connection therewith.
It was quite natural, although it had nothing at all
to do with the evangelical Reformation, that there should now rise in
opposition to the one-sided idealism and spiritualism of
Erasmus, who enters the ethical field in
several treatises, Enchiridion militis christ.; Matrimonii
christ. institt.; Institt. principis christ.; and others. Opp., Bas.
1567, 3 t. Manuductio ad Stoicam philosophiam, 2d ed., 1610. Ethica Aristotelica, etc., Selenoburgi, s. a., 4to.,—later: Cosmopoli,
1681, 4to. De incertitudine et vanitate scientiarum, 1527 (?) then
in Col., 1531.
Less influential upon his own age than upon recent
times, was the philosophy of Spinoza. His chief work, Ethica (1677),
which appeared only after his death, constitutes almost an entire philosophical
system, of which the ethical
All this is clear and consequential; but how can the existence
of a moral consciousness be reconciled therewith? How can any thing
be morally required or done, if every thing takes place with unconditional
necessity, and if will-freedom is only a false appearance? That there
can be no question of a moral command proper, of an “ought,” Spinoza
himself virtually admits, inasmuch as he declares it his purpose to
speak of human actions just as if the matter in question were lines,
surfaces, and solids (iii. prooem.) We are active in so far as any thing
takes place within or without us, of which we are the perfect cause;
and the more we are active, and the less we are passive, so much the
more perfect are we. Even as all other things, so also the spirit strives
to retain and to enlarge its reality; its striving is its willing; the
end is not different from the cause—from the unfree-acting impulse of
nature; the passing-over to a higher reality awakens the feeling of
pleasure; the opposite, that of displeasure. Pleasure in connection
with the consciousness of its cause, is love; the opposite is hate.
For a real difference between good and evil there is, in this world-theory,
no place whatever. Neither good nor evil is a reality in things themselves,
but both are simply subjective conceptions and notions, which we form
by a comparison of things, and are hence only relative relations having
their basis not in things but in ourselves,—are only modes of our thinking;
for example, a particular piece of music is good for a melancholic
Hence—so infers Spinoza—all
is good which is useful; and all is evil which hinders from a good (iv,
def., 1, 2.) Hence virtue is the power or capacity of acting in conformity
to our own nature; virtus nihil aliud est, quam ex legibus propriae naturae agere; hence every one must follow the necessity of his nature,
and by it judge of good and evil. Hence sin is avoided for the simple
reason that it is contrary to our nature; but why sin is yet in fact
committed, Spinoza needs not to answer, because sin in the proper sense
of the word cannot be committed at all; of sin there can be any question
only in the State, and, there, it is disobedience to civil law (iv,
37, schol. 2). As reason can require nothing which would be against
nature, hence it requires that each should strive for that which is useful to
himself; and useful is that which brings each to a higher reality. Hence morality requires that each should love himself, should
seek to preserve as much as possible his existence, and to bring it
to higher perfection and reality; and man is all the more
The good always awakens
delight; hence delight is per se necessarily good, and sadness necessarily
evil, as well as whatever leads to sadness. Hence compassion is, for
the rational man, evil and irrational; true, it often inclines us to
beneficence, but this we should do at any rate even without compassion,
(this is the virtue of generositas); and the truly wise man knows indeed
that nothing is or takes place in the world over which we could grieve;
moreover compassion easily leads astray to false acting (Eth. iv, 50).—Also
humility as including a feeling of sadness is not a virtue, and
springs not from reason, but from error, inasmuch as in it man recognizes
himself as, in some respect, powerless, whereas, in virtue of the prevalence
of universal necessity, he has all the power necessary to his destination
(iv, 53). Repentance over committed sin is not only not virtuous, but it
is irrational, because it rests on the delusion of having done a
free and, that too, evil action, whereas the action was in reality necessary,
and hence good; he who feels repentance is consequently doubly miserable.
However, our moralist appears to shrink back from the practical consequences
of this doctrine; he declares it as very dangerous when the great masses
are not kept in bounds by humility, repentance and fear (iii, 59, def.
27; iv, prop. 54),—an apprehension which is, of course, entirely inexplicable
from the ground-principle of his system, and must be banished, as a
mere “imagination,” into the sphere of unreason; for how can there
be, in Spinoza’s world, a dangerous populace to be curbed only by false
notions, seeing that indeed every thing that takes place is absolutely
a necessary divine act?—The notion that any thing is bad or evil is,
according to Spinoza, per se already an evil;
Spinoza’s
ethics appears at once as very widely different from all preceding ethics;
its essential characteristic is, unhistoricalness. Greek philosophy,
and also scholasticism, are the fruit of a long and vigorous development
of an historical current of human thought,—presuppose an already historical
moral consciousness, for which they aim to create a scientific form.
Spinoza’s ethics sprang, in no sense whatever, from the spirit of an
historical people,—has no historical antecedents, no historical consecration,
and hence wears in its lofty, reality-spurning bearing, also the character
of historical impossibility. Plato’s idealistic state is historically
possible on a Greek basis; Spinoza’s ethics can absolutely never and
nowhere be the expression of the moral consciousness of a people,—can
be appropriated only as their isolated moral consciousness by single
persons, who in proud selfishness imagine themselves far above the morally-religious
consciousness
Plato and Aristotle, for the reason that
they stand more within the current of history, stand also far nearer
the Christian consciousness than Spinoza. In his wide-reaching antithesis
to the real essence of spirit which is in fact necessarily history,
he is the father of the Naturalism of more recent times. Only the unfree,
the nature-entity, is real; the free, the spiritual, and hence also
the moral, in general has no existence whatever. Though indeed he contrasts
thought and extension in space, as being of different nature, yet this
thinking is in fact not free and spiritual, but bears absolutely a nature-character,—has not ends before it, but simply presents manifestations of a necessary
ground; so in the case of God, so in the case of man. Ethics is therefore
degraded to a mere describing of necessary nature-phenomena; and where
it falls into the tone of moral- exhortation in view of rational ends,
then this is to be understood either in a merely improper sense, and
is indulged in simply in view of the
Spinoza exerted in his own age but little influence.
Notwithstanding the deep spiritually-moral declension of that dark
period, the religious God-consciousness was as yet too vital to fall
in with this naturalistic Pantheism; and the requirement to recognize
all reality as necessary and good, could find little response at a time
of profound disorganization and far-reaching material, misfortune in
Germany. It
That from this doctrine there could arise for the moral life itself only a perverting influence, needs for the unprejudiced mind no proof. The letting of one’s self alone in his immediate naturalness and reality, is here even lauded as wisdom; repentance and sanctification within, and sanctifying activity without, become folly, because no one has either the right or the ability initiatively to interfere with the eternally necessary course of things. That Spinoza himself was an upright man, proves nothing in favor of his system; the weight of custom and the natural moral sentiments are often stronger than a perverse theory; nor is, in fact, mere uprightness in our social relations the full manifestation of the moral.
Leibnitz,—though also stimulated by Descartes, but opposed
to Spinoza in his fundamental thoughts, and more imbued with an historical
spirit, and standing in closer connection with the results of precedent
spiritual development,—did not produce a system of ethics proper, though
he broke the way for the development of such. Though highly respecting
the Christian consciousness, he yet had no very deep appreciation for
the same, and hence his thoughts in relation to religion and morality
are of a somewhat external character. He is unable to comprehend evil
in the purely spiritual sphere, but seeks for its roots, beyond this
sphere, in the essence of the creature as such. God as the absolutely
perfect rational spirit has indeed realized, among all possible conceptions
of a world, the best one; but as the world does not contain the fullness
of all perfection, which in fact exists in God alone, nor yet all possible
perfections, as in fact all that is possible has not become real, hence
there lies in the conception even of the best world still at the same
time the necessity of a certain imperfection, without which a world
is
In various essays, especially
in the preface to Cod. juris diplom., 1693; Gubrauer: Leibnitz; 1842,
i, p. 226 sqq.
In an original
spirit, and, in the moral sphere, almost independently of Leibnitz,
wrote Christian Wolf. He created a complete ethical system. Vernünft. Gedanken.
v. d. Menschen Thun u. Lassen
(1720); more elaborate is: Philosoophia moralis s. Ethica, methodo
scientifico pertractata (1750), both works forming the first part of
a whole which he presented in his Philos. prac. univ. (1738), the second
part of which embraces the doctrine of society or politics; also in
his Jus naturae (1740) there is much ethical matter.
Whatever takes place,
also the seemingly fortuitous, has a sufficient ground, either in itself
or in its connection with other things, and is in so far determined;
there takes place no change whatever which is not conditioned in the
peculiarity of the concatenation of the universe, and determined by
the antecedent circumstances thereof, just as a clock, set in motion
for a whole year, is determined in each moment of its movement by this
its first starting; the world is just such an absolutely, determined
clock-work,—is a machine. Also in the freedom of the human will, every
real determination has its sufficient ground, and is not arbitrary.
This freedom consists in the possibility of choosing and doing the opposite
of what we really do, but that the opposite possible should become real
pre-supposes motives, and in so far as the motive. is sufficient, this
determination to realization is also conditioned by the motive. It is
impossible that a person who knows something as better, should prefer
to it the worse, and hence in such a case it is necessary that he should
choose the better; but the will is free in this nevertheless, as in
fact man has the ground of his determination of will in himself.—This
sounds at once very questionable, and, as is well known, Wolf was, because
of this doctrine, driven from the Prussian states, as politically dangerous.
However, it is not to be overlooked that when man is considered as a
rational creature per se irrespective of the already-existing depravity,
his freedom is in fact not a groundless and irrational caprice, but
is determined by rational knowledge, and that, for the really moral
man in possession of correct knowledge, there does in fact exist a moral
necessity of following the rational. Hence Wolf’s thought is not
per
se incorrect, but only too unguarded, and therefore liable to misunderstanding.
As, however, Wolf expressly declares himself against determinism as
held by Spinoza, and as he distinctly and repeatedly asserts the real,
free will-determination of man, though indeed not as irrational caprice, Introduction to the 2d ed. of his
Moral.
Ethics has to do with the free actions
of men as distinguished from the necessary ones; and freedom consists
in the possibility of choice between several possible things. The condition
of a man is perfect when his earlier and later conditions agree with
each other, and all of them with the essence and nature of man., The
free actions of man promote or diminish this perfection, that is, they
are either good or bad. When, therefore, actions are to be judged according
to their moral worth, then we must inquire what change they bring about
in the condition of our body or soul. Hence free actions become good
or evil in virtue of their effect; and as the effect follows from them
necessarily and cannot fail, hence actions are good or evil in and of
themselves, and are not made so simply by God’s will; hence if it were
possible that there were no God, and that the present inter-dependence
of things could exist without him, still the free actions of men would
nevertheless remain good or evil.—Here the per se correct ground-thought
of the moral receives an external and therefore misleading application,
inasmuch as the result of our actions is dependent on other powers than
these actions themselves; only in an ideal and as yet not sin-perverted
condition of humanity, would such a judging of the moral worth of actions
from their result, hold good, though even then it would be certainly
more appropriate to determine this worth from the essence of the action
itself and not simply from its result. In this respect Wolf clings so
fast to the merely-outward that he says: “Thus, he who is tempted to
steal learns that stealing is wrong, because it is followed by the gallows.”
Equally one-sided is the contrasting of the goodness per se of an action
and of the will of God. The general maxim of ethics is therefore this:
” Do
Ethics proper, Wolf treats
as the doctrine of duties. Duty is an action which conforms to law.
Law is a rule to which we are bound to conform our free actions; it
is either a natural, a divine, or a human law. Reason is the teacher
of the law of nature; this law fully embraces the whole moral life,
and is, for this life, sufficient and absolutely valid and unchangeable,
for it rests on the harmonizing of our actions with our nature. But
as this our nature is established by the divine creative will, hence
the law of nature is at the same time also a divine law, an expression
of the divine will, though this will is not to be conceived of as an
arbitrary one, so that, for example, God’s will might declare the per
se good for evil, and the per se evil for good. The duties are: (1)
duties of man toward himself, and more specifically, toward his understanding,
toward his will, toward his body, and the duty in regard to our outward
condition (that is, our social position); (2) duties toward God, and
more specifically, love to God, fear and reverence, trust,
Wolfian ethics has manifestly,
both in form and in contents, great defects. In respect to form, it
may be reproached with a manifold commingling of empirical maxims with
speculation; notions derived from experience are often simply analyzed
and then used as bases for further inferences, and that, too, with the
pretension of philosophical validity; also there is abundant philosophical
dogmatism, inasmuch as the thoughts are very frequently not really developed
in regular process from the ground-thought, but are only associated
and joined with it. In respect to matter, there prevails throughout
this ethics, despite all its monotheistic presuppositions, a naturalistic
tendency; Wolf knows only the immediate natural existence of the moral
spirit, but not the history thereof, that is, the life proper of the
same. His ethics has a history of the spirit neither as its presupposition
nor as its goal; there is created by the moral activity not a moral
history of humanity, but only a state of the individual. Hence the question
as to whether indeed the actual nature of man is not already in some
respects a product of such a moral history of humanity,—whether or not
it is a pure unchanged original nature,—falls outside of this circle
of thought, and in fact remained unheeded by philosophical ethics, and
hence also to a large degree by theological ethics, throughout the eighteenth
and a part of the nineteenth century; and in this respect Wolf was,
in fact, the forerunner of the modern Rationalistic school. And what
he says of sinfulness, of divine grace and of Christianity, by way of
guarding against this naturalistic ground-tendency, is rather mere personal
In the spirit of Wolf, though with some independence, Canz labored further, in Tübingen; his Disciplinae morales omnes, 1739, is an able survey of the entire ethical field as then known; more theological is his Instruction in the Duties of Christians, (1745, 4to., presenting ethics as “duty-imposing God-acquaintance” and prefacing the doctrine of duties simply by an essay on the four chief springs of all human action and omission, namely, the flesh, nature, reason, and the gracious workings of the Holy Spirit). Alexander Baumgarten (a brother of the noted theologian) perfected, in his Philosophia ethica (1740, 1751), the Wolfian ethics, especially in formal respects; he places our duties toward God (as those which condition all the others) at the head.—G. F. Meier of Halle wrote, on the basis of Baumgarten’s book, a fuller and more popular work: Philosophical Ethics (1753).—(The voluminous and superficial Eberhard appears in his Ethics of Reason (1781) merely as a feeble, barren imitator of Wolf.)
Nearly contemporaneously with
Wolf, had Thomasius (of Leipzig and Halle) presented ethics from the
stand-point of mere common sense in a very popular form, Von der Kunst vernünftig. u. tugenhaft
zu LIEBEN, etc., 1710;
Von der Artzenei wider die unvernünftige Liebe, 1704; comp. Fülleborn:
Beitr. z. Gesch. d. Phil, 1791, iv.
Clear-headedly
and with deep Christian knowledge, Christian August Crusius (of Leipzig,
ob. 1776) opposed the Wolfian philosophy, but was abler in criticizing
than in creating, and hence. of more limited influence than Wolf, (“Directions
for Living Rationally,” Anweisung vernünftig zu leben Moralische
Vorlesungen.
Since the middle of
this century the taste for really philosophical thinking had been declining
in Germany, in the precise measure in which the pretension to the name
of “philosophical century” was put forward; instead of a spiritually-vigorous,
constantly-progressing development of thought, we
In England and France an
anti-Christian tendency gave rise to a progressively-degenerating moralism,
which,—resting on an idealess empiricism, and, though vigorously resisted,
yet maintaining a rising influence for a long time,—based itself in
part on a superficial deism, but also in part, and more consequentially,
advanced to pure atheism and materialism, and exalted into a moral
law the lowest form of Epicurean self-seeking. But it was especially
reserved to the French mind to draw the ultimate consequences of these
premises, and to seek in the wildest demoralization the highest civilization
and “philosophy,” and, through a destruction-loving dissolution of
all moral consciousness in the higher classes (a dissolution which swept
over devastatingly into the un-German circles of the German literary
world) to prepare the way for that general convulsion in Europe which
at length attained, only through horrors and anarchy, to some presence
of mind and to some degree of calm. English moralism lingered
Quite otherwise than in Germany was philosophical ethics shaped in England and France. While in Germany, notwithstanding the deep spiritual and moral disorder consequent upon the Thirty Years’ war, there prevailed, for a long while still, a predominantly Christian spirit, (which remained proof against the. Spinozistic Pantheism, and sought to develop philosophy in harmony with Christianity, and only gradually and at a late hour was enervated by French freethinking through the un-German culture of the higher classes), in England the religious contests had resulted in a deep spiritual laxity and in a growing aversion to Christianity and to the spiritual in general. The unspiritual empiricism of Bacon and Locke seconded this superficial empirical turning-away to the immediately visible and prosaic reality of the world. At first it was regarded as a progress to disregard the doctrinal contents of Christianity and to insist only on its morals; then it followed very naturally that this morality, as divorced from its doctrinal basis, should be divorced also from its historical presuppositions in general, and be derived only from the consciousness of the natural man, and that religion in general, as in contrast to the Christian religion, should be conceived simply as a system of moralism, over which then, not as a foundation but as a protecting superstructure, a superficial deism was constructed;—or, indeed, this tendency was followed out further, and men rejected also this deism, and contented themselves with the superficial morality of individual self-love; and it must be regarded as a real progress (as in contrast to this spiritual superficiality), when clearer thinkers skeptically undermined also this pretended natural religion and natural morality, and insisted on the vanity of all human knowledge.
Bacon of Verulcam, though not himself constructing
an ethical system, opened, by his empiricism (which opposed all previous
philosophy, and according to which there is absolutely no knowledge
à priori, but only such as springs from immediate and primarily sensuous
experience), a current of thought which was dangerous to the Christian
world-theory, although he himself did not in the least oppose the Christian
consciousness, but rather placed Christian faith above all philosophical
knowledge. However, he was not clearly conscious of the tendency of
his fundamental thoughts. On this basis, Locke (ob. 1704) subsequently
developed a system of philosophy which attained, especially in England,
to a wide-reaching influence, but which is in fact, properly speaking,
the very opposite of all speculation. True knowledge arises only from
the experience of our sensuous existence; general notions are not the
first but the last; the human mind per se has and produces neither
notions nor ideas, but is rather a tabula rasa upon which the experience
of the objective world first writes its characters; and it is only through
impressions from objective existence that the spirit attains, through
abstraction, comparison, and analysis, to ideas. Out of this empiricism,
however harmless and pretentionless it might seem at first examination,
was destined logically to result a system of religion and morality essentially
different from the Christian world-theory; and historical facts realized
this logical sequence. It sweeps away, in fact, at a single blow all
ideal contents of the scientific and religious consciousness, in so
far as these lie outside of sensuous experience. But experience furnishes
not ideas, but only impressions; and at furthest one attains only to
abstracted notions, which, however, have no general and unconditional
validity; for the ideas of the divine and eternal, there is no place.
But man must have something ideal; if he has it not in and above himself,
so that he has simply to accept it in his rational self-consciousness
and in religious faith, then he must have it before himself,—must practically
and productively create it, in action; the ideal is indeed not yet real,
but it is to become so. It is consequently, at least, a presentiment
of reason which turned this idealess empiricism toward ethics. But precisely
this one-sided moralism shows most evidently,
Already before the more complete development
of the Baconian empiricism by Locke, Thomas Hobbes had drawn the natural
and clear consequences of the same. Especially
in his Leviathan, 1651, and in his De cive. 1647; comp. Lechler:
Gesch.
des engl. Deismus, 1841, p. 67 sqq.
In
express antagonism to this materialism, Cumberland made general benevolence
the principle of morality; De legibus naturae, 1672, 83, 94. Systema
intellectuale, etc., in English in 1678. Enchiridion ethicum, in his
Opp. omn., 1679, 2 fol.
Locke endeavored
to avoid the inferences which Hobbes had drawn from the ground-thought
of empiricism, at least in the moral sphere. Essay on the Human Understanding, 1690.
The consequences of this unspiritual ethics
showed themselves very soon. The position of Wollaston The Religion of Nature Delineated,
1724. Characteristicks, (1711), 1714; comp. Lechler, p. 240 sqq.
While Collins, the eulogist of
Epicurus, a disciple and friend of Locke, and the first who called himself
Freethinker, denied the freedom of the will and regarded human action
as absolutely determined by the influences surrounding us, Hutcheson
(of Glasgow) endeavored to rectify the moral system of Shaftesbury by
assuming good-will toward others, in contradistinction to self-love,
as the contents proper of the innate moral sense. To the purely empirical
foundation of ethics, however, he held fast in his “System of Moral
Philosophy” (1755). We find that certain actions in men, even when these
men are not affected by the consequences of the same, meet with approbation
or disapprobation; from this it follows that the ground of this judgment
is not personal advantage or disadvantage, but a natural moral sense,
which perceives the moral irrespective of personal interest, and has
therein pleasure, and which therefore also, equally disinterestedly,
impels to moral action. This inborn moral sense is not a conscious idea,
but an immediate feeling which differs from the interested self-feeling,—just
as we have an immediate pleasure in a beautiful, regular form, without
being conscious of the mathematical laws thereof, or having any benefit
therefrom. The moral approbation and striving are consequently also
all the purer the less our personal interest is involved in the case.
The selfish and the benevolent propensities mutually exclude each other,
for benevolence begins only where personal interest ceases. Therefore
we have to make our choice between the two propensities, and as the
benevolent one is the purer, hence the moral proper consists exclusively
in it. Virtue is not practiced for the sake of a benefit or an enjoyment,
but purely out of inner pleasure in it; our nature has an inner innate
tendency to promote the welfare of others without having any regard
therein to personal benefit. This benevolence toward others is the essence
of all the virtues; for even our care for our own welfare is exercised
in order to preserve ourselves for the good of others; the degree of
virtue rises in proportion to the happiness procured for others, and
to the number of persons benefited by us. The preliminarily-
Also David Hume treats of the subject of ethics, though with less
acumen than that wherewith, in the sphere of religion and of theoretical
philosophy, he skeptically undermines the certainty of all knowledge. Treatise of Human Nature, 1730;
Essays, etc., 1742. Institutes of Moral Philosophy, 1769.
The ultimate consequences of
empiricism were not drawn by the systematic moralists, but by other
so-called Freethinkers who wrote more for the general public. Such was
the case especially with the most influential among them, Lord Bolingbroke,
the chief representative of deism (ob. 1751), Works, 1754.
English moralism checked itself, for the most part, at half-ways; it found as yet too much moral consciousness alive among the masses, not to feel bound in general to hold fast still to a respectable code of morality, even though at the cost of the consequentiality of the system. In France, on the contrary, the demoralization had made sufficient progress among the cultivated classes to be enabled to throw off all reserve, also in the sphere of theory. The scanty remnants of religious and moral contents still retained in the freethinking ethics of Englishmen, had to be thrown out, in the further fermenting process, as discoloring dregs, in order that the unmingled wisdom-beverage of the natural man might attain to its life-giving purity; deistic moralism had to pass over into atheistic materialism. The French ethics of frivolity became, also for German ears, a sweet-sounding music; and French parasites at the little German ducal courts charged themselves with the task of distilling the decoction of trans-Rhenane moral notions also into the lower strata of the German population.
Shaftesbury and Hutcheson had endeavored to, secure the
innate moral feeling against the threatening overthrow of all morality,
by placing over against the feeling for self, a feeling for the social
whole, either as of like worth, or as of a still higher validity. This
course was arbitrary, and not grounded in their fundamental principle;
for every man is, as an individual, the nearest to himself. And a feeling
inborn in me relates, after all, first and last, always to myself; as
a merely natural being inspired by no higher idea, I feel for others
only in so far as I am myself interested in them. Feeling clings absolutely
to the subject, and egotism is the inner essence of any natural
The intellectual revolution—represented
by great names—made sweeping advances in France and also in the fashionable
world servilely dependent on France, at the courts of the rest of Europe,
and especially of Germany,. and had already long since reached its ultimate
results, before the political revolution enabled also the lower classes
to speak their word in the same sense. It was fashionable at this period
to designate by the word “esprit” (as the privilege of the giddy, freethinking
world) that which was subsequently called “revolution” among the great
masses, and which was, in fact, simply the consequence of the former.
Every thing which hitherto had passed as philosophy, (with the exception
of the Epicurean), was regarded as nonsense; the most stupid superficiality,
provided only that it ridiculed sacred things, passed as philosophy;
wit and frivolous fancies took the place of earnest science. The “philosophical” century sank, in the appreciation of really philosophical thought,
deeper than even the earlier and as yet barbarous
Jean Jacques Rousseau produced indeed
no system of ethics, but he exerted in the sphere of moral opinion an
influence such as no author before or after him ever exerted, and felt
even up to the present day,—not indeed because he uttered deep thoughts,
but because he gave expression to what lay in the spirit of the age,—himself
an utterly ungenuine character—under the form of a severe moralist undermining
all morality, under the form of earnest thought bidding defiance to
all philosophy and science, under the form of a censorious sage, in
hermit-like seclusion from the world, preparing soft cushions for the
vices of the “cultured” great. And precisely in this his peculiar character
he chimed in with the tastes and desires of the age; he simply made,
in the dike of the as yet somewhat cramped current of the age, the little
breach through which its pent-up waters dispersed themselves over the
low-lands so as subsequently, as morasses, to exhale the pestilential
miasma of revolution. Of scientific ground-thoughts there can in Rousseau
be no question; bold assertions and rhetorical phrases take almost every-where
the place of scientific demonstration. The writings of Locke exerted
upon him the greatest influence; sensuous experience is also for him
the source of all ideas. His moral views receive their proper commentary
in his utterly immoral life. His Contrat social (1761) became the theoretical
basis of the French Revolution; his narrow-minded sophistical work, Emile (1762) had an immeasurable and bewildering influence on education,
and is yet to-day the catechism of all un-Christian schemes of education.
Rousseau’s religion of nature, as he called it, is a shallow idealess
deism grouped around the
Oeuvres, Paris, 1830, t. 31, p. 262; t. 12, p. 160; t.
42, p. 583. Ibid., t. 37, p. 336; t. 38, p. 40.
What little
of a superficial religious consciousness had yet remained with Rousseau
and Voltaire, entirely vanished with the Encyclopedists, and especially
with Diderot (ob. 1784). Diderot endeavored, above all things, entirely
to divorce morality from religion; the latter is for the former rather
a hindrance than a help. In morality itself he wavers, undecided, between
naturalistic determinism and a very superficial society-morality. The
Epicurean view he regards as the most true. All the vices spring from
covetousness, and hence they can all be got rid of by the abolition
of property,
L’homme machine; L’art
de jouir., 1751.
The total result of materialistic
ethics is summed up in a work written very probably by Baron Holbach
with the cooperation of Diderot and other Encyclopedists: System de
la nature, par Mirabaud (1770), constituting the gospel proper of atheism,
and presenting nakedly and undisguisedly, in a dull and spiritless form,
the results of the philosophy of Locke, Hobbes, and Condillac, who are
in fact expressly cited as sources. As man is only a material machine,
hence there is between the physical and the moral life no difference;
all thinking and willing consist simply in modifications of the brain.
All propensities and passions are purely corporeal states—are either
hatred or love, that is “repulsion or attraction;” the absurd doctrine
of the freedom of the will has been invented simply to justify the equally
absurd one of divine providence. Man is only a part of the great world-machine,
determined in all his movements,—a blind instrument in the hands of
necessity; the concession of freedom even to a single creature would
bring the whole universe into confusion; hence whatever takes place
takes place necessarily. Religion and its ethics are the greatest enemies
of man, and occasion him only torment. The system of nature alone makes
man truly happy,—teaches him to enjoy the present as fully as possible,
and gives him, in relation to every thing which is not an object of
enjoyment, the indifference that is essential to his happiness. Hence
there is no need of a special moral system. Its fundamental principle
would necessarily be: “enjoy life as much as thou canst;” but every
man does this already of himself without instruction. Self-love, one
of the manifestations of the law of gravitation, is the highest moral
law. The chief condition of happiness is bodily health; the true key
of the human heart is medicine; the most effectual moralists are the
physicians; he who makes the body sound, makes the man moral. Every
man follows by nature and necessarily his own special interest, a course
of conduct which in fact follows immediately and necessarily from his
bodily organization; vice and crime
It is
characteristic of the difference of national spirit that the naturalistic
tendency could not, in its stark crudity, take hold upon the German
people, but came to expression only in association with other higher
principles, with Christianly-moral elements, namely, in the Rationalistic
“illuminism” of the eighteenth century. Open unbelief proper and materialistic
morals spoke, in Germany, almost exclusively French; and the sycophant
court-atheists were too much despised to find hearty favor with the
masses. The demoralizing revolution which proceeded front the upper
classes, met with a powerful opposition in the German national spirit.
Even while a popular school of poetry divorced itself from the Christian
consciousness, still this school held fast to the antithesis of the
spiritual and the naturalistic world-theories, recognizing the former
as the higher; “let him who cannot believe, enjoy; let him who can believe,
deny himself.”—The superficial deistic ethics attains to greater influence
in Germany than the materialistic, though without giving rise to any
important scientific works. On the basis of the uncorrupted purity of human nature there was developed a superficial utilitarian morality
without deeper contents; and this morality was looked upon as the essence
proper of Christianity. Basedow’s demagogic attempt at world-renovation
System der reinen Phil.
oder Glückseligkeitslehre des Christenthums.
It was only the revival
of the Pantheism of Spinoza in the nineteenth century that gave rise,
in Germany, to a scientific form of ethics; but also this system, though
of a far higher character than the freethinking of France, yet, in its
later unscientific offshoots, ultimated in like results; and the fact
that in our own day a resuscitated materialism, resting, however, more
on natural science than on philosophy, presents us again with the ethics
of the “System of Nature,” is certainly no indication of progress
in spiritual development, though indeed an
The theological ethics of the evangelical church of the eighteenth century made but a quite temperate use of German philosophy before the time of Kant, and insisted but little (not without some influence from Pietism) on the antithesis of the two evangelical churches in the sphere of ethics. Buddaeus furnished the first scientific system of ethics, though in its philosophical elements it is rather eclectic. Stapfer, Baumgarten and others, applied the Wolfian philosophy in pedantic minuteness to Christian ethics; while Mosheim constructed it more upon a purely Biblical basis, and upon that of practical life-experience. Toward the close of the century the superficiality of Rationalism began already to make itself felt.
Francis Buddaeus of
Jena, one of the most learned and sound theologians of the eighteenth
century, a man of comprehensive philosophical culture and who wrote
also a thoughtful, evangelically-inspired system of practical philosophy
(Elementa philosophiae practicae, 1697, and often), prepared the way,
with his Institut. theologiae moralis (1712, ’23, 4to.; in German as
“Introduction to Moral Theology,” 1719), for a more thorough, systematic
treatment of ethics. The rich, carefully and some times rather lengthily
treated subject-matter rests upon sound Scripture exegesis and careful
observation of human life. Influenced somewhat by Spener, this writer
combines practical sense with a scientific spirit. He begins at once
with the thought of the corruption of human nature and with that of
divine grace, and hence gives not a general philosophical, but only
a specifically-Christian system of ethics, in view of man as regenerated.
The ground-thought of morality is: man must do every thing which is
essential to a constant union with God
The Reformed divine, John F. Stapfer of Bern
made, in his rather comprehensive than scientifically-important system
of ethics (1757), a very moderate use of the Wolfian philosophy. The
earlier Calvinistically-rigorous spirit is here already very much modified.
Sigismund Jacob Baumgarten (of Halle, a brother of the philosopher)
follows, in his discursive “Theological Ethics” (1767, 4to.), the
painfully-minute manner of Wolf, which is applied also in his numerous
other writings, and which leaves absolutely nothing unsaid, not even
that which every reader could supply for himself; and this pedantic
discursiveness detracts considerably from the otherwise real thoroughness
of the treatment.—(The Wolfian philosophy was applied to theological
ethics by Canz (§ 40), by Bertling [1753], and by Reusch [1760]; J.
C. Schubert [1759, ’60, ’62] is more independent.)—The not sufficiently
prized P. Hanssen: (of Schleswig-Holstein) gave in his “Christian Ethics”
(1739, ’49) a very clear and sound presentation of the evangelical doctrine,—a work which gives evidence of a truly philosophical spirit, and protests
against the one-sidedness of Wolf; in the first general part, he develops
the threefold form of the moral life—in the state of innocence or perfection,
in the state of sin, and in that of regeneration. T. Crüger (of Chemnitz)
develops, in his Apparatus theol. moral. Christi et renatorum (1747,
4to.), the thought of the moral pattern as found in Christ, and hence
of
Mosheim’s comprehensive “Ethics of the Holy Scriptures,” 1735-70; continued
by Miller, 1762; Miller wrote also a special Einleit. in die theol.
Moral, 1772, and a short Lehrbuch, 1773.
In the system of Kant philosophical ethics put off the naturalistic or subjectivistic character; the moral idea attained, on the basis of the freedom of the will, to an objective significancy, and became an end per se, and not simply a means to the end of individual happiness. Independently of the theoretical reason and of the God-consciousness, the moral idea became the presupposition and basis of all speculation on the supersensuous, and hence also of rational religion. The universal validity of the moral law became the formal, and, pretendedly also, the material principal of morality. But the one-sided rational character of this morality left essential phases of the moral unaccounted for; and the merely formal character of the moral law admitted of no consequential carrying-out in detail.—The application of Kantian ground-thoughts to theological ethics was of two-fold effect,—raising it indeed above the utilitarian ethics of the “illuministic” current, but robbing it, in its divorce from religion, of a part of its Christian character.
Previous philosophical ethics had gone astray
in two respects. The two equally true and necessary thoughts, that,
on the one hand, the moral idea has a universally valid significancy,
that it cannot be dependent in its obligating character on the chance
caprice of the individual subject, and that yet, on the other, it has
in fact for its end the perfection of the person, and hence also his
happiness, had been one-sidedly held fast to, each for itself. Naturalistic
Pantheism gave validity simply to the objective significancy of the
moral,—absolutely annihilated the freedom of the will, and conceived
by the moral law as a mere fatalism unalterably determining every individual;
and when, with the champions of materialistic atheism, this notion of
the unfree
His first and by no means unimportant service consists in the fact that
basing himself primarily on the skepticism of Hume, he annihilated,
at a single stroke, all confidence in previous methods of philosophizing,
whether speculative or empirical, and deprived both empiricism and the
pure theoretical reason, in so far as it had thus far been developed,
of all right to pretend to establish, in respect to the supersensuous,
or the ideal, any thing whatever as philosophical knowledge. Though
in his “Critique of the Pure Reason” (1781) Kant had ascribed to the
speculative reason, in the sphere of theoretical knowledge, really only
the function of formal thought or logic, he yet attained in fact to
a positive knowledge of reality in the sphere of the practical reason,
that is, in that of morality. Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, 1785;
Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, 1788, the chief work of the Kantian
form of ethics; Metaph. Anfangsgründe der Rechtslehre, 1797; Metaph.
Anf. der Tugendlehre, 1797.
Though morality as resting exclusively upon the categorical
imperative of the reason has not happiness for its motive,
Met.
d. Sitten, ed. 1838, p. 355 sqq.
Unquestionably there lies
in the ethics of Kant a decided advance beyond antecedent philosophical
ethics, and especially beyond the empirical and naturalistic. He raised
it from the low region of a self-seeking or external utilitarian
Kant undertakes, now,
actually to advance further by the aid of this formal principle, and
infers from it, as a second formula, the principle: “act in such a
manner as to consider and use rational nature, that is, humanity in
general, both in thy own person and also in the person of every other
one, always, at the same time, as an end, and never merely as a means,”—namely, because rational nature is personality, and personality is
an end in itself. Kant himself admits that this formula is merely formal;
but precisely in this fact lies its defectiveness, for it is just as
impossible to attain to positive contents from merely formal principles
as to obtain a real value from a purely algebraic equation. When the
principle is only a mere empty space which is first to be filled from
without, and not the fountain which unfolds itself into a stream, there
is no possibility of advancing a step-further. And hence, the above
formula may be applied equally well morally and immorally; the whole
question depends on, what
Another
wide-reaching defect of Kantian ethics is this, that morality appears
as a mere one-sided affair of the understanding, while the heart entirely
disappears, and is left utterly unexplained. This one-sidedness results
of course from the divorce of morality from religion. It sounds plausibly,
and is likewise very easily said, that the good inust be done for its
own sake, that the law of the reason must be per se the direct motive
to moral action; but as Kant positively admits elsewhere the possibility
that man can act also against his better knowledge, and consequently
against his conscience, hence this undeniable fact proves that rational
knowledge is not per se a sufficient motive to moral action. The thought
of love is wanting; man can indeed act against his knowledge, but not
against his love. It is only in a love of the good that a sufficient
motive for moral action is found; but in this God-ignoring morality of
the understanding, love has no ground and no place. The love of the
living God can enkindle love, but an abstract thought cannot. Kant demands
simply unconditional obedience, but not love; he expressly declares
that the law must often be fulfilled even against our inclinations,
yea, in the face of decided repugnance; but this would amount only to
an outward fulfilling of duty. Kant’s morality is possible only for
beings who have in themselves no manner of sin and no germ of sin; but
so soon as even the mere possibility of an already-existing sinfulness
is admitted, this ethical system loses all foundation; for both the
certainty and also the potency of the rational law as a motive, are
thereby undermined. And now Kant in fact admits,—in his remarkable
work: “Religion within the Limits of Pure Reason” (1792, ’94)—(which,
with the exception of the one point here in question, became the catechism
of Rationalism)—the indwelling of an evil principle in man along-side
of the good one, a “radical evil in human nature,” existing there already
anterior to any exercise of freedom,—a tendency to evil inhering
The Kantian ground-principles of ethics were further carried out and applied, with partial modifications, by Kiesewetter (1789), by K. C. E. Schmid (1790), by the Roman Catholic Mutschelle (1788, ’94), by Snell (1805) in smooth, popular style, by L. H. Jacob (1794), by Heydenreich (1794), by Tieftrunk (1789 and later), and by others.
Kant’s moral system was, in its general character,
very poorly adapted to be applied to Christian ethics. Its absolutely
unhistorical character, its merely formal principle the application
of which rests simply on reflective calculation, its lack of any other
moral motive than the authority of an abstract law, and above all the
reversing of the Christian relation between morality
The most important theological presentations of ethics from the Kantian stand-point are: J. W. Schmid (“Spirit of the Ethics of Jesus,” 1790; “Theological Ethics,” 1793; “Christian Ethics,” 1797), who presents the founding of ethics on Kantian principles as the sole mission of Jesus; J. E. C. Schmidt (1799), in a similar spirit; S. G. Lange; S. Vogel. Stäudlin treated theological ethics (from and after 1798) with constant changing of title and stand-point, until in his “New Treatise on Ethics” (1813, third edition, 1825) he despaired of any superior principle at all, and brought together, in a wavering eclecticism of heterogeneous thoughts, a feeble whole. The self-metamorphosing C. F. von Ammon repeated at first (1795-’98) simply the ethics of Kant, but soon after (1800) broke entirely away from him, without yet getting rid of his own superficiality.
The philosophy of Fichte, resting upon Kant, but, with rigid consequentiality, proceeding beyond him, manifested itself’ predominantly upon the ethical field. Fichte endeavored indeed to complement the formal principle by a material one, but both of them are so absolutely devoid of ethical contents, and the material principle stands even so positively in antagonism to the contents of a really moral consciousness, that an actual ethical development of these principles became impossible; and the occasionally sound and morally-earnest contents of the development in detail could only be loosely associated with these principles, but not scientifically developed from them. The immaturity of the entire stand-point rendered it also impossible that any important ethical tendency in philosophy or theology should arise therefrom. Fichte labored indeed fruitfully in a time which had lost all solid philosophical foot hold, but he formed no school.
Fichte’s “System of Ethics according to
the Principles of the Doctrine of Science” (1798) is the most important
attempt to apply the ground-thoughts of the “Doctrine of Science”
to one particular science. We would do injustice to the Fichtean philosophy
were we to consider its unfruitful eccentricities apart from their connection
with the immediately-preceding philosophy; his philosophy is a scientifically-justified
and necessary advance beyond Kant. As Kant had denied to the pure reason
all objective knowledge, and also placed all contents of the practical
reason exclusively in the subject, and derived the objective validity
of the law of reason simply from the subject; so Fichte simply made
the validity of the individual subject, the ego, all-predominant,—conceived
all objective existence merely negatively as the non-ego, and based
cognition and volitionating absolutely on the individual ego. The ego
and the non-ego reciprocally determine each other, and hence stand in
reciprocal relation. The ego posits itself as determined by the non-ego,
that is, it cognizes; and it posits itself, on the other hand, as determining
in relation to the non-ego, that is, it volitionates. The two are only
two phases of the same thing, inasmuch as the non-ego in its entire
being exists only in so far as it is posited by the ego, so that, strictly
speaking, the ego is its own object. The ego should in all its determinations
be posited only by itself,—should he absolutely independent of all non-ego.
Only as volitionating, as absolutely determining the non-ego, is the
ego free and independent. The ego as rational, should not permit itself
to be determined by any non-ego independent of it,—should be absolutely
independent, should make all non-ego absolutely dependent on itself,—should
exercise absolute causality upon the same. In freedom, in volitionating,
I am rational; and in that I determine my freedom as an absolutely self-poised
power, that is affirm my freedom, I am moral; hence morality is self-determination
to freedom. I should act freely in order that I may become free, that
is, I should act with the consciousness that I determine myself in absolute
independence. Hence the formal principle of morality is: “act according
to thy conscience,” or “act always according to the best conviction
of thy duty;” and as material principle of ethics, there results this:
“make thyself into an independent or free being.” “I should be a
So absolutely void a principle of morality was probably never before proposed. The formal principle expresses nothing other than: act according to a yet unknown material principle. As to what the “conscience” is and contains, we are as yet utterly uninformed; and the material principle gives only the formal presupposition of morality, but not its contents proper; I must in fact already be free, in order to be able to act morally; freedom is not the contents, but the form, of moral action. If this material principle is to be taken in its entire significancy (and according to the philosophical presupposition this is strictly consequential), then the very opposite of all morality would be thereby expressed, namely, the acting absolutely without law, the virtualizing of freedom in its simple form without contents, and hence as mere individual caprice—amounting to a radical absolutism of the individual subject. whereas all morality consists in fact most essentially in a determining of individual freedom by an unconditionally and objectively valid law,—is a subordinating of the subject to a universally-obligating idea standing above the subject. From Fichte’s principle there results, not a system of ethics, but, consequentially, only a theory of license. While it is true that in his examinations of particular moral questions only loosely connected with his system, Fichte shows himself, for the most part, high-minded and earnest though indeed often strangely unpractical, still there lies, at least in his ground-principle and in his general system, no justification thereof. The cold, heartless, non-loving, intellectual character of his discussions, is moreover not very well adapted to awaken a moral interest.
What Fichte says on moral questions in his later, more rhetorical
than scientific, writings, bears in general the same unfruitful stamp,—
often widely misunderstanding the reality of life; we need only call
to mind the new system of education proposed in his much admired “Addresses
to the German Nation,” which was presented with the assumption of world-regenerating
significancy, but at which, in fact, no experienced educator can avoid
smiling, and also his “Doctrine of the State” which is even more than
fantastical. The public often allowed itself to be deceived by the ring
of his periods,
Schelling,
after passing from Idealism to Pantheism, and from Pantheism to a dualistic
Theosophy, endeavored, in this his third development-period, to reconcile
the freedom of the individual with the sway of necessity, and indeed
of necessary evil, by regarding individual man as determining himself
for evil in an ante-mundane self-determination as influenced
Schelling, appearing at first as a disciple of
Fichte (at a period which was very receptive and thankful for philosophy,
even for a youthfully unripe one), and then, in a more highly speculative
spirit passing beyond him, and also in constant metamorphoses progressively
rising above even himself,—never settled, never bringing any thing to
perfection,—did not develop in his earlier period any ethical system,
and, at furthest, only gave, on purely Pantheistic foundations, more
or less clear suggestions toward an ethical system; however, in his
last productive period (when, under the stimulation of Jacob Böhme
and Francis Baader, he plunged into a current of phantasy-speculation
not un-akin to Gnostic dualism), he furnished, in his “Philosophical
Inquiries as to the Essence of Human Liberty” (1809), a less dialectically
developed, indeed, than theosophically-portrayed, though certainly deeply
suggestive, presentation of the presuppositions and bases of a system
of philosophical ethics.—In God there exists, before all reality, his
eternal ground, his per se unintelligent nature, out of which in all
eternity the divine understanding generates itself as the eternal antithesis
to this ground-nature, which understanding stands dominatingly over
against this nature,—rules creatingly in it, and by its acting upon
it creates the finite world. Every creature has consequently a twofold
nature in itself: an essentially dark principle corresponding to the
nature-element in God, and also the principle of light or understanding.
In the highest creature, man, there exists the entire power of the dark
principle, namely, the unintelligent self-will, and also the entire
power of light—the deepest abyss and the highest heaven. From the fact
of his springing from the ground or nature-element in God, man has in
himself a principle relatively independent
Schelling promised a fuller development of these ground-thoughts, but did not carry it out. The enthusiasm with which this philosophy of his (which promised the solution of all the enigmas of existence), was received,—an enthusiasm which was not dampened, but rather heightened by its oracular tone and by the boldness of assertion which often assumed in it the place of scientific proof,—gave occasion also in the ethical field, to various, though mostly feeble, fruitless and soon abandoned, attempts at a further carrying-out of his ground-principles,—some of them in greater approximation to the Christian consciousness; (Buchner, 1807; Thanner, 1811; Klein, 1811; Möller, 1819; Krause, 1810, though deviating considerably from the master, and rather independent).—The facility with which other kindred currents of thought admitted of being joined into Schelling’s theosophical outbursts, was indeed very tempting to the book-prolific spirit of the age, but it also soon awakened in the sobering-down spirit of the time a degree of distrust; and the fame obtained by the master in his meteoric flight, showed itself less partial for his zealously-imitating scholars; and when Daub, after welcoming, in their regular order of succession, all the philosophies from Kant to Hegel, advanced in his “Judas Iscariot” (1816), on the principles of Schelling, to a sort of personality of evil, to a philosophical Satanology, which indeed is yet far different from the Christian view,—then, at last, the predominantly Rationalistic spirit of the age began to lose confidence in the worth of the more recent philosophy as a whole.
F. H. Jacobi of Munich, who, in antithesis
to all Pantheism, took his departure from the stand-point of the free
personal spirit, has given in his miscellaneous and unsystematic writings Werke, 1812, 4
vols.
The philosophy of Hegel knows nothing
of ethics under this name; upon its Pantheistic ground no really personal
freedom can find foothold, although it makes all possible endeavors
to find scope therefor. The reality of freedom appears essentially only
under the form of necessity, as that right which, on the part of the
subject, is duty; ethics appears only as the Doctrine of Right; its
scientific significancy lies in its decided advance beyond the previous
subjective stand-point (which appears even yet in Kant) to the objective
validity and reality of morality in the family, in society and in the
state, as real moral forms of humanity. In the fact, however, that only
the State is conceived as the highest realization of objective morality,
lies also the one-sidedness of the view, inasmuch as the full reality
of moral freedom remains unrecognized.—The Hegelian school has not
developed philosophical ethics beyond the positions
The ethics of Hegel, as presented in his
“Philosophy of Right,” (1821; better by Gans, 1833),—the field occupied
by which constitutes a part of the Philosophy of the Spirit,—rests on
the Pantheistic current set in motion by Spinoza, and appears in higher
scientific maturity than in Schelling.—The rational spirit, as the unity
of the objective consciousness and of the self-consciousness, is the
true free-become spirit; it cognizes every thing in itself and itself
in every thing,—is, as reason, the identity of the objective All and
the ego. In that the rational spirit recognizes rationality in nature,
and hence nature as objective reason, it is theoretical spirit. But
reason knows its own contents also as its object, objectivizes the same,
posits them outwardly, that is, the spirit is practical spirit—volitionates.
But in so far as it is determined to this volitionating by no other
object foreign to itself, but determines itself simply by virtue of
its rational being, it is free spirit. Hence the spirit posits itself
outwardly from within, objectivizes itself in freedom, realizes itself
in an objective manner. This its realization is not nature, but is essentially
of a spiritual character, is a spiritual world, a kingdom of the spirit
which exists not merely in the ego, but has an objective reality the
creator of which is the free rational spirit; the objective-become spirit
is the historical world in the widest sense of the word. The freedom
of the rational spirit is, however, with Hegel, by no means a real freedom
of choice; such a freedom finds in the Pantheistic world-theory no legitimate
place; it is only the spirit’s active relating to itself, its being
independent upon any other external entity, but it is nevertheless essentially
at the same time
The Philosophy of Right falls into three parts. (1)
The free will is primarily immediate, as individual will. The subject
of right is the person, which stands to other persons primarily in an
excluding relation. The person confers upon itself the reality of its
freedom posits a special sphere of its subjective freedom in property.
I declare an objective entity as my own, and hence as that upon which
another has no right. This is primarily as yet an outward and not necessary
action; it lies not in the essence of the thing itself that I declare
it as my property; hence right in this sphere is the merely formal,
abstract right. The freedom of the subject is assured and recognized
by the fact that other subjects must concede the validity of my freedom,
my property, my right; freedom receives thus a general significancy,
becomes right. The freedom of individual subjects is regulated by law,
is reduced to general harmony. But that the reality of this right rests
primarily on the subjective will, and that the general will is the product
of the individual will, is as yet an irrational state of things, and
abstract right advances now, (2), to morality, wherein the individual
will becomes the product and expression of the general will, but on
the basis of freedom, through free recognition. In the first sphere
the subjective freedom of the individual is bound by the right of the
other, and hence trammeled. But in the free recognition of this right,
the bondage, the trammeling element, is thrown off; right and law are
no longer a merely outward limiting element, but become the personal
law of the subject, the contents of his free self-determination. In the
mere fulfillment of right the disposition does not come into question;
I may concede to another his right unwillingly, and hence immorally;
so soon, however, as right becomes morality, the disposition, the intention,
But in the accomplishing of this duty of realizing
the good, the subject finds himself involved in a multitude of contradictions
and conflicts; the outer objective world is, as related to the subject,
a something different from and independent of him; hence it is doubtful
and fortuitous whether or not it is in harmony with the subjectively
moral ends,—whether or not the subject finds his well-being in it. The
abstract right was a merely outward and formal one; morality is a merely
inward subjective something,—has harmony only as a postulate, as an
“ought;” the good is, as yet, only the abstract idea of the good; hence
there is need of a third, higher stage wherein the subjective and the
objective phases are united, where the postulate of the harmonizing
of the two spheres is realized, where the ought is also reality, where
the good is no longer an abstract general something over against which
the subject stands as yet as an isolated individual, but where the good
has attained to reality, where freedom has become nature, and law has
become custom. This brings us, (3), to the sphere of customariness—the
completion of the objective spirit. In customariness the spirit enters
into its true reality; the person finds the good outside of himself,
as a reality to which he subordinates himself, as a moral world. Thus
Hegel, deviating from the ordinary usage of language, distinguishes
morality [moralität] from customariness [sittlichkeit], conceiving the
former as the merely subjective and individual morality, and the latter
Phanomenol., p. 358;
Phil. des Rechts, pp. 417, 427, sqq.
The
Hegelian school, dividing itself soon after the master’s death into
a right wing, which progressively drew nearer to the Christian consciousness,
and into a left wing, which sank lower and lower in the direction of
radicalism and destructiveness, has not produced any very important
results in the ethical field. (Michelet gave a “System of Philosophical
Ethics,” 1828; Von Henning presented the “Principles of Ethics,” historically,
1824); Vatke (“Human Freedom in its Relation to Sin and to Grace,”
1841) develops, in opposition to Julius Müller’s “Presentation of the
Christian Doctrine of Sin,” the Hegelian view in a very ingenious manner,
without, however, succeeding in reconciling the unfreedom essentially
inherent in the Pantheistic System with the general consciousness of
moral freedom of choice; evil, though regarded as ultimately to be overcome,
is yet held to be an absolutely necessary incident of the good. Daub
and Marheineke undertook, in their ethical works, Daub: Prolegomena zur Moral,
1839; System d. theol. Moral., 1840; Marheineke: System d. theol. Moral.,
1847.
The left wing of the Hegelian school,—which
strayed still further from the master in the direction of a vulgar Pantheism
based on Spinoza, and which does not rise in the ethical field even
to the honest consequentiality and earnestness of Spinoza, but, for
the most part, sinks back into the most vulgar freethinking of French
materialism,—has shown itself utterly unfruitful in ethical works; it
has made itself felt, on the field of ethics, less by scientific productions
than by impudent assertion. David Strauss is unwilling to admit the
fatalistic necessity of all the individual phenomena of life, so consequentially
affirmed by Spinoza; but he gives scope, without hesitation, to chance
and to arbitrary discretion, and affirms (of course without any justification
in his system) even the freedom of the human will. What the world had
not as yet known, Strauss presumes to assert, and takes the liberty
of blankly contradicting the principle of Spinoza, that the human will
is a causa non libera, sed coacta. In his view, Pantheism alone guarantees
the free self-dependence of man. If God is immanent in the world, and
hence also in man; if, as in the Christian world-theory, the finite
stands over against the absolute Agent as a distinctly different object,
then is this finite (the world) only in a condition of absolute passivity;
but in Pantheism the absolute actuosity lies in the collectivity of
finite agencies, as their own activity. While in monotheism it holds
good, that as truly as God is almighty so truly are men unfree, in Pantheism
it holds good that as certainly as God is- self-active so truly are
men also so, in whom He is so. Glaubenslehre,
ii, 364. Glaubenslehre, ii, 615 sqq. Werke, i, 355.
Thus the philosophy of “modern science” has returned, in rapid circuit, back to the morality of French materialism, to the practical morality of Philip of Orleans under Louis XV. The more advanced and almost insane productions of the still more “radical” circle, especially of the circle of “emancipated” ones,—which formed itself around Bruno and Edgar Bauer, and by whom even Feuerbach was soon stigmatized (Max Stirner) as belonging among “theologians, “believing hypocrites” and “slavish- natures,”—belong not in the sphere of a history of science, but, at best, only in that of the history of the morals of the nineteenth century.
We will mention additionally, in passing, only the materialistic world-theory,
which, though not directly springing from the Pantheistic philosophy,
yet coincides with it in its ultimate results, and which has its origin
more in the empirical study of nature than in philosophy, and which
in its moral views has sunk back to the French materialism of the Systéme
de la Nature (Moleschott, Vogt, Büchner, etc.). If spirit is simply
a phenomenon. of brain-force, and if man is nothing more than a highly
organized animal, then the moral catechism is very easy and short. Vogt
declares it as presumption in man to pretend to be any thing essentially
different from the brute; man belonged originally to the ape race, and
has only gradually
The philosophical ethics of the two last decades, based in general
on Hegel or on Herbart, shows a manifestly growing approximation to
the Christian world-theory; but because of the rather unphilosophically
The most recent times have suddenly shown, after an excessive and almost morbid intensity of enthusiasm for philosophy, an all the greater lack of earnest interest therein. The excessive expectations were soon followed by, discouraging disappointments; and while at the beginning of the century the most crude products of philosophy, if they were only presented with assurance, were sure of an enthusiastic welcome, the, in general, far more mature and more scientific and profound works of recent times have met with but cold indifference; and though the philosophers of the present day have some reasons to complain of the thanklessness of the educated world, and that only ambitious rhetoric is now able to win applause, nevertheless this state of things is clearly explainable as a reaction from the wild intoxication of the past.
Nearly
contemporaneously with Hegel wrote Herbart of Königsberg. Taking up
his position outside of the historical development-course of philosophy,
and, in keen skepticism, discarding the unity of the principle of reality,
he had in his elegantly written “Practical Philosophy” (1808) thrown
open a new path. In his view the previous treatment of ethics, as the
doctrine of goods, of virtues and of duties, makes the will of a twofold
character—a norming or commanding one, and a derived or obeying one,— and hence makes of the will its own regulator; but this is impossible
and absurd. On the contrary, a will-less judgment as to willing precedes
all actual willing; this judgment cannot command, but only approve or
disapprove; but it never acts upon the will as strictly isolated, but
always as a member of a relation. Hence all willing presupposes moral
taste, which has pleasure in the morally-beautiful; thus the moral is
conceived essentially esthetically. The esthetical judgment as to
the will leads it to action but not necessarily; the will should be
obedient, but it can be disobedient; taste is immutable, the will. is
flexible; thus manifests itself the idea of inner freedom. Together
with this idea Herbart assumes still others,—ideas
The “Speculative Ethics” (1841) of Wirth sprang from the Hegelian school,
but deviates therefrom in many respects; the Pantheistic fundamental
view is not entirely overcome; (ethics is “the science of the absolute
spirit as will realizing its absolute self-consciousness into its likewise
infinite reality;” in details it offers many good thoughts, though also
many mere empty phrases, especially where it treats of religious morality;
to close the development of ethics with an amateur-theater as one of
the most important moral agencies, is surely a very odd fancy).— Chalybäus
of Kiel: “’System of Speculative Ethics,” 1850,—doubtless the most important
treatise on philosophical ethics in modern times. Chalybäus, in his
work, breaks entirely away from the Pantheistic view of Hegel, and
treats ethics on the basis of the idea of personal freedom, and does
not, as Hegel, regard the ideal and the real as in perfect harmony,
but on the contrary recognizes evil as merely possible in virtue of
freedom, and hence
1830, 3 ed., 1851.
(The preposterously original Schopenhauer goes back to Indian
conceptions, and finds morality only in an annihilating of the individuality.
The will to live is the root of all evil; the denying of this will is
virtue. The will must turn away from existence, must turn to will-lessness;
for existence is absolutely null, and the will a delusion, from which
we must become free, Vulgar suicide is indeed not right, for it is a
phenomenon of a strongly-affirming will; on the contrary, a voluntary
starving of one’s self to death is a real moral sacrificing
The Theological ethics of the nineteenth century, in so far as it came not into a relation of complete dependence upon some particular philosopher of the day, remained either upon a purely Biblical ground, mlaking no use or only a very moderate use of philosophical thoughts, or assumed a rather eclectico-philosophical character. Rationalism proved surprisingly unfruitful.
Ethics was treated in a predominantly original manner by Schleiermacher, in a widely differing and irreconcilable double-form of philosophical and of theological ethics,—in the former case entirely irrespective of the God-consciousness, and in the latter, from the inner nature of the pious Christian consciousness,—with great richness and ingenuity of thought, but also without a rigidly scientific form, and, in a violently-revolutionary originality, in many cases beclouding the Biblical view with foreign thoughts.—Rothe shaped his “Theological Ethics” into a system of theosophic speculation, resting upon the philosophy of Hegel and Schleiermacher, but carried out in an unclear originality, covering almost the entire field of Christian doctrine,—constituting a work in which a pious mind, and exotic thoughts deeply endangering the Christian consciousness, go hand in hand.
Although
the scientific treatment of the subject-matter of ethics in the earlier
and (in the main) Biblical moralists of the nineteenth century, may
be regarded as relatively feeble,
De Wette has furnished
a threefold treatment of ethics, which more than the above-mentioned
works is imbued with philosophical thoughts (from the stand-point of
the Kantian Fries). His “Christian Ethics” (1819) one half of which
is occupied by the history of ethics (which is introduced between the
general and the special part), is more ingenious than profound, and
does not appreciate the full significancy of the evangelical consciousness.
His “Lectures on Christian Ethics,” 1824, are intended for a wider
circle of readers. (His Compendium of Christian Ethics, 1833, is only
a brief outline.) With the exception of this rather Rationalistic than
evangelical treatment of ethics, Rationalism has, contrary to what might
have been expected, produced but very little in the ethical field. The
next most noticeable work is Ammon’s (comp. § 43) later “Hand-book
of Christian
Lehrbuch,
1826.
Philosophical and theological ethics
were treated very profoundly and very peculiarly, but in a manner violently
revolutionary and different from all precedent treatment of the subject,
by Schleiermacher; indeed in no other science does the inner and unmediated
scientific dualism of this writer appear so prominently as here. His
critical acumen, his restlessly changing and almost fitfully metamorphosing
productiveness, showed itself here under the most brilliant forms; but
there is for that reason all the greater need of a cautious guarding
against being deceived by the arts of his dialectic genius. Introduced
into the field of philosophy by the study of the Greeks, and especially
of Plato, enthusiastic for Spinoza, and building mostly upon him, but
also powerfully incited by Fichte and Schelling, and uniting in himself
the collective, anti-historical and anti-Christian culture of his day, Schleiermacher was not able to harmonize his Pantheistic and unhistorical
metaphysics with his heart-Christianity, which latter, though sometimes
drooping and wounded, yet grew constantly more and more vital with the
advance of his years; he left these two forces standing side-by-side
in his soul, and honestly entertained and expressed religious convictions
with which his philosophical opinions stood in irreconcilable antagonism;
and it would be a great mistake to undertake to interpret the ones by
the others. Schleiermacher did not rise above this inner dualism,—a state which
not every mind would be able to endure. In his first period, he manifested in
the field of ethics a keen critical power, but also as yet great unclearness as
to the
Comp. Vorländer’s: Schleierm.’s
Sittenlehre, p. 69; C. H. Weisse in Tholuck’s Litter. Anz., 1835,
408 sqq.; Twesten, in his preface to Schleiermacher’s Grundriss, p.
76 sqq. Compare the dissenting judgment of Twesten, idem, p. 83 sqq.
The “Elements of a Criticism of Preceding Ethics,” 1803,—able
but in a heavy and often unclear style, and hence more celebrated than
known,—relate only to philosophical ethics, and discard, in keen but
sometimes unjust criticism, all previous methods of treating this science,
and present (as opposed to the more usual method of treating of ethics
as the doctrine of virtues or duties) the doctrine of goods as the basis
of the science, and, hence, ethics as an analysis of the highest good;
the good is the objective realization of the moral. The criticism of
the work is applied not so much to the contents as to the scientific
form, and seeks to show that the contents can be
The “Sketch of a System of Ethics” (published in 1835 by Schweizer,—from Schleiermacher’s posthumous papers, in an imperfect digest of
different sketches; in a briefer and more general form in 1841 as “Outlines
of Philosophical Ethics” with an introductory preface by Twesten) Comp. Vorländer:
Schleierm.’s Sittenlehre, 1851,—keen and clear but not evangelical. Werke, iii, 2, 403. See his discussion of the difference
between natural and moral law: Werke, iii, 2, 397. Ueber das höchste
Gut, 1827, ’30; Werke, iii, 2, 446. Comp. Abh. üb. d. Behundlung des
Tugendbegriffs, 1819; idem 350. Comp. Abh. üb. d. Behandlung des
Pflichtbegriffes, 1824; idem 379. System, p. 54. Ibid., p. 72.
In
the doctrines of goods Schleiermacher distinguishes a twofold moral
activity: (1) In so far as reason exerts itself upon nature as external
to it, it is organizing, in that it makes nature an organ of reason;
(2) in so far as the interpretation of reason and nature is already
posited, the activity of reason is of a symbolizing character, in that
it makes itself recognizable in its work. These two activities manifest
themselves in turn in two different manners. In as far, namely, as reason
is the same in all men, in so far also these two activities are alike
in all; but in as far as individual men are originally and in their
very idea different from each other, in so far also is the activity
of an individual character, shaping itself in a peculiar manner in each
individual. This notion of a legitimate personal peculiarity, Schleiermacher
emphasizes very strongly, without, however, really grounding it philosophically.—Virtue expresses itself either as enlivening or as militant: as
enlivening,
it expresses the harmonious union of reason and nature; as militant,
it overcomes the resistance of nature; under another phase it is either cognoscitive or
representative; thus we arrive at four cardinal virtues:—the enlivening virtue as cognoscitive or representative is
wisdom or
soundness of judgment; as representative it is love; the militant virtue
as cognoscitive is prudence;
A wholly different picture is furnished by the
Theological Ethics, which was edited by Jonas in 1843, from Schleiermacher’s
posthumous papers, and from notes written by his hearers, under the
title: “Christian Ethics according to the Principles of the Evangelical
Church.” Die christliche Sitte, etc.
Now, between the moments of pleasure and unpleasure there occur moments of satisfaction (and which are consequently
distinguished from those of pleasure), that is, of relative blessedness,
the fundamental feeling proper of the Christian, and which is at the
same time also an impulse to acting. This acting, however, aims not
at effecting a change, but only at revealing itself outwardly, at making
known its condition of happiness to others, and hence is not an operative
but a representative acting. The operative form of acting is only the
way for attaining to the perfect dominion of the spirit over the flesh,
that is, to the feeling of blessedness; and the active
However much we may admire the creative
genius whereby Schleiermacher endeavored to establish and carry out
his highly peculiar classification of ethics, still in reality we cannot
but declare it as unadapted and unsuccessful; and, in spite of the great
and almost idolizing admiration shown by the public for the skillful
thought-artist, this piece of art has not succeeded in calling forth
any imitation. At the very first glance one recognizes the utter unnaturalness
of making Christian ethics begin with Church-discipline and Church-reformation,
and close with the subject of play; while, in the second part, is presented
the widening form of action in Church-communion, and, in the third,
the ecclesiastical worship of God,—as also the unnaturalness of placing
sexual communion alongside
Christl. Sitte., etc.,
Beil., p. 184.
Richard Rothe, standing
in part upon Schleiermacher’s stand-point, but also making use of Hegelian
and Schellingian philosophy in combination with his own somewhat peculiar
and daring form of speculation, furnishes, in his “Theological Ethics
” (1845-’49, thoroughly revised, 1867) a system of theosophy embracing
also a large portion of dogmatics and even some extra-theological topics,
which, however much we may admire its erudition and earnest thought-labor,
yet, in view of its wonderful commingling of Christian faith, extra-Christian
philosophy and extra-philosophical fantasy, we cannot avoid regarding
as a failure. Rothe manifests, in contrast to a large number of more
recent Speculative theologians, an estimable sense for scientific honesty;
and where he deviates from the ecclesiastical and Biblical view (and
this occurs in very essential and fundamental things) there he does
not disguise the antithesis in fine-sounding words; not every one, however, could succeed
The other more recent writers on ethics keep themselves more
independent of recent philosophy. The work of Harless: “Christian Ethics”
(since 1842 in five almost similar editions; the sixth edition, 1864,
greatly enlarged), is a brief, able and purely-Biblical treatise,—practical,
purely-evangelical and well written; but the scientific form is faulty;
the ideas are not sharply distinguished nor always held fast to; the
clearness is more frequently appearance than reality; the development
of thought is neither vigorous nor uninterrupted; the classification
(salvation-good, salvation-possession, salvation-preservation) is not
capable of being kept distinct; the second and third parts overlap each
other, for there is no possession without preservation; and what appears
here as preservation is in fact possession; the general introduction
is insufficient, and Harless himself says of his book, that it contains
“no trace of a system.” Vorr.
z. 6 Au. XV.
The ethics of the Roman Catholic Church since the dissolution of the Order of the Jesuits has been becoming, even in the circles which stood in connection with this Order, considerably more cautious; in other respects it has been treated (when not casuistical) principally on the basis of Thomas Aquinas. The influence of recent philosophy has made itself in many respects apparent; in part, there has been also a noticeable approximation to the evangelical consciousness, without, however, rising beyond a hesitating half-way position. The ground-character of the Romish church as distinguished from the evangelical, namely, its tendency to conceive the moral predominantly under the form of law, whereas the latter conceives it more as virtue, remains the same even up to the present.
During the last two centuries the ethics of the Roman
Catholic church has made decided advances toward the better. The growing
indignation against the perversion of the same by the Jesuits rendered
even the Jesuits themselves more cautious, although also the works of
the earlier Jesuits have- been very largely in use up to most recent
times. Alphonzo de Ligorio’s Theologia moralis, since 1757, (an enlargement
of the work of Busenbaum), is yet to-day one of the most highly prized
hand-books of ethics; (on it are
These improvements
of Romish ethics do not succeed, however, in changing its ground-character
as in contrast to evangelical ethics; the notion of the meritoriousness
of human works as co-working toward salvation is not yet overcome,—virtue
is not mere thanks, but it establishes claims; the moral life is not
END OF HISTORY OF ETHICS.
Genesis
1:26-2:24 1:28 1:28-30 2:2 2:3 2:15 2:16 3:7 3:15 5:24 6:22 7:5 9:1-29 10:8 12:3 12:3 12:4 12:11-13 15:15 17:1 18:18 20:2-4 22:18 24:12-14 25:8 26:3-5 26:4 26:4 26:5 27:14-16 27:28 27:29 28:3 28:4 28:13-15 30:24-26 31:20 34:1-31 34:14-16 35:9-11 35:22 37:1-36 37:35 38:1-30 39:2 39:3 39:5 39:23 48:4 49:5-7 49:14-16 49:26 49:29 49:33
Exodus
2:11-13 3:1-22 4:1-31 19:5 19:6 20:2 20:2-4 20:2-4 20:3 20:12 20:17 23:16 28:30
Leviticus
Numbers
6:26 20:7-9 26:55 26:56 27:21 33:54 34:13
Deuteronomy
4 4 4:1-49 4:40 5:1-33 5:29 5:29 5:33 5:33 6:2 6:3 6:5 6:6 6:18 6:20-22 6:24 6:25 7:9 7:12 7:13 7:13-15 8:3-5 8:6-8 10:12 10:12 10:19-21 11:1 11:9-11 11:13 11:21-23 12:28 13:3 13:17 13:18 15:4-6 15:10 15:15 16:12 18 26:16 28:1-3 28:47 30:2 30:2-4 31:16 32:43 32:47 32:49-51 32:50
Joshua
7:14-16 13:6 14:2 18:6-8 19:1-3 21:4-6 22:5
1 Samuel
10:20-22 14:8-10 23:6-8 28:1-28 28:6 30:7 30:8
2 Samuel
2 Kings
1 Chronicles
2 Chronicles
Job
Psalms
1:2 2:8 6:5 16:10 18:49 29:11 49:15 49:15-17 67:2 72:8-10 81:13 81:14 86:9 86:10 88:10-13 96:7 96:10 102:15 112:1 115:17 117:1 119:24 119:35 119:70 119:121
Proverbs
1:7 3:5 3:12 3:13-15 3:18 3:22-24 3:34 4:23 6:25 8:17 8:35 11:2 15:24 15:24 16:1-33 16:18 16:33 18:12 18:18 23:26 27:2 28:1-28 29:23
Ecclesiastes
Isaiah
2:2-4 11:2 11:3 11:10-12 25:6-8 38:18 42:1 42:6 45:20 45:22 45:23 49:6 52:15 54:3 55:5 60:1-22 61:11 62:2 65:1 66:18-20
Jeremiah
Joel
Amos
Micah
Haggai
Zechariah
Malachi
Matthew
5:5 5:31 7:21 7:24-26 19:8 19:21
John
Romans
1:18-20 1:21-23 1:27 2:13 7:22-24
1 Corinthians
Philippians
Colossians
1 Timothy
2 Timothy
Titus
James
2 Peter
1 John
Revelation
Judith
Sirach
2:24 3:16 3:17 3:33 7:1-36 8:1-3 8:1-19 8:6 8:7 8:19 8:20 9:1-18 9:15 9:30-32 12:1-18 12:10-12 13:1-3 13:1-26 14:14-16 15:15-17 17:18-20 25:10 25:32 29:15-17 30:6 32:27 33:25 35:23 37:17 41:8-10 42:6 42:7 49:15 49:16 51:18-20
i ii iii iv v vi vii viii ix x xi xii xiii xov 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316 317 318 319 320 321 322 323 324 325 326 327 328 329 330 331 332 333 334 335 336 337 338 339 340 341 342 343 344 345 346 347 348 349 350 351 352 353 354 355 356 357 358 359 360 361 362 363 364 365 366 367 368 369 370 371 372 373 374 375 376 377 378