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Some Merits and Defects of Contemporary German Ethics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2009

David Baumgardt
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To preach morals is easy, to ground them difficult. I think this saying of Schopenhauer is quite true. In the writings of the moral theorists we meet with ample enthusiasm for the beauty and the loftiness of moral principles. But even the best moral sermons are certainly no substitute for philosophical reasoning. To-day more than ever before we need the soundest foundation for a truly fixed ethics. For, to-day there is not a single affirmation in morals, which is not contradicted by its opposite. Eduard von Hartmann, for instance, could in the beginning of the twentieth century still maintain that the differences of opinion in ethics are concerned

Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 13 , Issue 50 , April 1938 , pp. 183 - 195
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1938

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References

page 183 note 1 See Hartmann, E. Von: System der Philosophic im Grundriss, Bd. VI, Grundriss der ethischen Prinzipienlehre, 1909, p. v:Google Scholar “Die verschiedenen Systeme der Moral... zeigen... in ihren konkreten Detailausführungen mehr Ahnlichkeit miteinander... als die Verschiedenheit und Gegensätzlichkeit in ihren Prinzipien vermuten lasst.” Westermarck, E.: The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas, 1924, vol. ii, p. 742:Google Scholar “The moral ideas of mankind... present radical differences. A mode of conduct which among one people is condemned as wrong is among other people viewed with indifference or regarded... as a duty... But at the same time... the general uniformity of human nature accounts for... similarities.” Or see Moore, G. E.: Ethics, 1912, p. 94:Google Scholar “If we look at the extraordinary differences that there have been and are between different races of mankind and in different stages of society in respect of the classes of actions” and “particular actions” “which have been regarded as right and wrong it is... scarcely possible to doubt that in some societies actions have been regarded with actual feelings of positive moral approval towards which many of us would feel the strongest disapproval.”

page 184 note 1 Hartmann, N.: Ethics (translated by Coit, Stanton), 1932, vol. i, p. 17.Google Scholar

page 186 note 1 Scheler, M.: Der Formalismus in der Ethik und die materiale Wertethik, II, Aufl. 1921, p. 22;Google Scholar compare Hartmann, N., Ethics, 1932, vol. ii, p. 31.Google Scholar

page 186 note 2 Ibid., compare Hartmann, N., Ethics, 1932, vol. i, p. 177.Google Scholar

page 187 note 1 See these terms especially in Hartmann, N.: Ethics, 1932, for instance, vol. i, p. 185.Google Scholar

page 188 note 1 Spranger, E.: Lebensformen, 1930, p. 315.Google Scholar

page 189 note 1 Hartmann, N.: Ethics, 1932, vol. i, p. 225 et seq.Google Scholar

page 189 note 2 Ibid., vol. ii, p. 365 et seq.

page 189 note 3 Ibid., p. 35.

page 190 note 1 Hartmann, N.: Ethics, 1932, vol. ii, pp. 50, 51.Google Scholar

page 190 note 2 Ibid., p. 78.

page 190 note 3 Ibid., p. 408.

page 190 note 4 Ibid., pp. 50, 51.

page 190 note 5 Ibid., p. 387.

page 190 note 6 Ibid., p. 319.

page 190 note 7 Ibid., p. 387.

page 190 note 8 Ibid., p. 387.

page 191 note 1 See Baumgardt, D.: Der Kampf um den Lebenssinn unter den Vorldufern der modernen Ethik, 1933, p. 59 et seq.,Google Scholar where I have tried to clear up these questions in as full detail as possible.

page 191 note 2 Hartmann, N.: Ethics, 1932, vol. ii, p. 276.Google Scholar

page 191 note 3 Ibid., p. 226.

page 192 note 1 Hartmann, N.: Ethics, 1932, vol. i, p. 190.Google Scholar

page 192 note 2 Ibid., p. 191.

page 192 note 3 Ibid., p. 192.

page 193 note 1 And such fantastic ideals, moreover all that “contradicts... conditions of actualization,” every “ethically fabulous world” are quite rightly rejected by Hartmann, (see Ethics, vol. ii, p. 324Google Scholar).

page 193 note 2 See some further systematic researches on these problems of connection between ethical a priori and ethical a posteriori in my essay, “Über einige Hauptmethodenfragen der modernen Ethik,” Logos, 1930, and especially in a larger book prepared (as the last systematic volume of my history of modern ethics) under the title Theory of the Meaning of Life or Ethics.

page 193 note 3 Hartmann, N.: Ethics, 1932, vol. i, p. 185.Google Scholar

page 193 note 4 Ibid., vol. ii, pp. 188 f.

page 194 note 1 See Hegel, : Werke, 1838, Bd. I, p. 245: “Differenz des Fichteschen und Schellingschen Systems”Google Scholar; and see Bentham: Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, chap. X, § 30: “Would you do a real service to mankind, show them the cases in which sexual desire merits the name of lust; displeasure, that of cruelty; and pecuniary interest, that of avarice.” But “those rhapsodies of commonplace morality, which consist in the taking of such names as lust, cruelty, and avarice, and branding them with marks of reprobation” are “empty.” “Applied to the thing they are false; applied to the name, they are true indeed, but nugatory.”

page 194 note 2 Hartmann, N.: Ethics, 1932, vol. ii, p. 233: “The will to justice is right even, when intention is objectively wrong, when the… law (in German, “Der Sachverhaltswert des Gesetzes") has been misunderstood—exactly as it is right independently of the consequence.”Google Scholar

page 195 note 1 Hartmann, N.: Ethics, 1932, vol. ii, p. 60.Google Scholar

page 195 note 2 Hartmann, N. speaks even of “blindness to the rank of a value” (see Ethics, vol. ii, p. 189).Google Scholar