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Ethics THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG 190
fluence of English deism and French materialism. The representatives of this movement included J. P. Miller, Gottfried Leas, and K. F. Bahrdt. J. D. Michaelis followed a similar course in his Moral (3 parts, Gottingen, 1792-1802), while F. V. Reinhard defended a rationalistic supernaturalism in his System, der christlichen Moral (5 vole., Sulzbach, 1788-1815).
A new trend in the history of ethics was introduced by tmrnan, Pl Kant, among whose works bearing upon this subject special
6. Kant's mention may be made of the Crrund- School. legung zur Metdphysik der Sitters (Riga, 1785), Kritik -nor Vernun t 1788,), and Metaphysische Anfangsgriinde r ugendlehre ( Konigsberg, 1797). Through Kent's energetic emphasis on the mnnnrh+,~_al necessity of the morA_1Aw, which transcended all empiricism, the dominant eudemonism was refuted, and a deeper knowledge of evil became possible than had been within the capabilities of the ethics of the Enlightenment. Kent was also in the right in his view of the autonomy of the moral law as opposed to external interpretations of moral authority, even though they be based upon the Bible; but the harshness with which he defended his attitude destroyed the proper dependence of ethics on religion and resulted in a legalistic rigor ism. Despite such faults, Kent's basal ethical views were widely accepted in the theology of his period, not only by rationalistic ethicists, but also by such supernaturaliats as K. F. Staudlin and J. H. Tieftrunk; although some, like J. F. Flatt of Tiibingen, modified them. Through anthro pological investigations, F. H. Jacobi and J. F. Fries endeavored further to develop the Kantian ethics, and they were followed by De Wette, Baumgarten-Crusius, and L. A. Ka61er. A dis tinct .step in advance of Kant was marked by J. G. Fichte's Siltenlehre (Jena, 1798), especially in its demand for a desire of the good, and through its establishment of ethics upon the belief in the moral governance of the world. Still stronger was the reaction against the subjectivity of the period of the Enlightenment in favor of a recog nition of objectivity in the ethics of Schelling and Hegel. The former, in his System des transcen dentalen Idealismus (Tiibingen, 1800) and his Untersuchungen fiber das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit (1809), laid down the principle: "Become a being, and cease to be merely a phenomenon." He failed, however, to distinguish the ethical domain from the province of law, and thus as cribed too much importance to the State. Still more one-sided was the view of Hegel, expressed in his Grundlinien der Philosophic des Reehts (Ber lin, 1833), since he discovered ethics, as the real ization of the rational processes of the world in general, preeminently in the ordinances of natural human society, but left the Church no secure position. In opposition to such metaphysical bases of ethics, Herbert, in his Allgemeine prak tzsche Philosophic (Gottingen, 1808) and Analy tasche Beleuchlung des Naturrechts and der Moral (1836), sought to establish the science solely on the facts of experience. According to him, ethics,as a division of esthetics, is to posit the simplest relations which, as being morally beautiful, evoke pleasure, but whose sources are not to be investigated. Herein Herbert doubtless intended to recognize both the unconditionality and the unity of the ethical, but the former quality was threatened by his fundamentally esthetic point of view, and the latter by the division into individual concepts of relation.
In consideration of these defects of philosophical ethics, it was the more momentous that theological
Friedrich Schleiermacher, who, in his Monologen (Berlin 1800), emphasized the significance of individuality, and in his Grundlinien einer Kritik der bisherigen Sittenlehre (1803) laid stress on the concept of moral good. Beginning with 1819, be published a series of treatises of ethical content, while after his death his philosophical ethics was edited on the basis of his lectures (Berlin, 1835), followed by his Christliche Sitte (1843). Although the first-named is divided into the theory of the good, the theory of virtue, and the theory of duty, it discusses only the first part in detail. Here Schleiermacher, influenced by Spinoza and Schelling, considers the good as a union of nature and reason; while the corresponding acts are either organizing (employing nature as a tool) or symbolizing (transforming all into a symbol of reason). This antithesis, however, is crossed by the classification of all activity into general and individual, so that both activity and the resultant good become fourfold. The theological ethics of Schleiermacher is distinguished from his philosophical system especially by the fact that it is based not on reason, but on the Christian consciousness, since it seeks to describe activity arising from the domination of such consciousness, and also explicitly considers sin. This attempt, carried out with masterly skill, to permeate the entire sphere of human activity with the principles of Christian ethics has exerted an influence far and wide. Among more recent theological ethicists, Schleiermacher has been very closely followed by K. A. Riitenick in his Sittenlehre (Berlin, 1832), which forms the second part of his Christliche Lehre fur Kon firmanden. The influence of Schleiermacher and Hegel is likewise manifest, despite the supernaturalistic spirit of the work, in the admirable Theologische Ethik of R. Rothe (3 vole., Wittenberg, 1845-48), which seeks to transform material nature into a spiritual personality from the point of view of Christian conscience.
An attitude closely akin to the mediating theology is represented by H. Martensen, in his Christe-
and J. Kostlin, in his Christliche Ethik (Berlin, 1899). A more conservative and Biblical position appears in C. F. Schmid's Christliche Sittenlehre (Stuttgart, 1861), C. Palmer's Moral des Christentums (Stuttgart, 1864), J. T. Beck's Vorlesungen fiber christliche Ethik (3 vole., Giitersloh, 1882-83), the third (ethical) part of M.