Moral Phenomena

Nicolai Hartmann

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351504638
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Since the nineteenth century, moral philosophy in the Western world has been dominated by utilitarianism, Kantianism, and relativism. Only a few philosophers have been able to escape from this Procrustean bed. Foremost among these few is Nicolai Hartmann (1882-1950). Together with Henri Bergson and Martin Heidegger, Hartmann was instrumental in restoring metaphysics. Hartmann's metaphysics differs markedly from that of both Bergson and Heidegger, in his indebtedness to Plato.In 1926, Hartmann published a massive treatise, Ethik, which was translated into English by Stanton Coit and published as Ethics in 1932. Ethics is probably the most outstanding treatise on moral philosophy in the twentieth century. The central concept of the book is ""value."" Drawing upon the pre-modern view of ethics, Hartmann maintains that values are objectively given, part and parcel of the order of being. We cannot invent values, we can merely discover them.The first part of Ethics is concerned with the structure of ethical phenomena and criticizes utilitarianism, Kantianism, and relativism as misleading approaches. After some introductory thoughts concerning the competence of practical philosophy, Hartmann discusses the essence of moral values, including their absoluteness and ideal being, and the essence of the ""ought."" Hartmann is both controversial and compelling. He provides a moral philosophy that rejects the subjectivism of the ruling approaches, without taking recourse to older theological notions on the foundation of the ethical. In sum: Hartmann's Ethics constitutes an impressive and preeminent contribution to moral philosophy.

PART I

THE STRUCTURE OF THE ETHICAL PHENOMENON

(PHENOMENOLOGY OF MORALS)

SECTION I

CONTEMPLATIVE AND NORMATIVE ETHICS

CHAPTER I

THE COMPETENCY OF PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY

(a) MORAL COMMANDMENTS, tHE GENERAL TYPE, tHEIR CLAIM TO ACCEPTATION

THE two questions which have been raised in the Introduction contain together the whole programme of ethics. They do not, however, divide it into two independent parts. Their connection is too inward, too organic for that. They cannot be separated, they are the two sides of one fundamental problem. I can gauge what I ought to do only when I “see” what in general is valuable in life. And I “see” what is valuable only when I experience this “seeing” itself as a valuable attitude, as a task, an inner activity demanding expression.

This interpenetration of the two questions is no merely indifferent matter as regards our method of investigation. The extended front of the problem disperses the energy of our forward thrust. Dividing it, we must take up one special problem at a time, and from what is then acquired recover a comprehensive survey. But the success of this method is assured only where, from the start, the interpenetration of the problems guarantees such a recovery. It is a favourable feature of ethical research that this condition applies to the cleavage of the fundamental question. We may quietly pursue by itself the narrower and clearer problem of what ought to be done, without thereby incurring the danger of ignoring the other and wider problem concerning the valuable in general. Both questions concern the same ethical principles, the same values. Only their respective domains are markedly different in extent. To obtain our first points of contact we must start with the narrower one; and for a while we may follow the traditional methods of ethics, which deal almost exclusively with what ought to be done. To bear in mind the partial character of the question will serve as an adequate corrective.

When we are seeking for principles, we must first of all ask: What kind of principles?

It is not enough to answer concisely: Values. What values are is precisely the question. And this question is more difficult than might be supposed. If we commence with the narrowest interpretation of ethical principles, as being the principles of what ought to be done, they unmistakably bear the character of commandments, of imperatives. They set up demands, constitute a sort of tribunal, and before this tribunal human conduct—either as a doing or as a mere willing—is to vindicate itself. But they themselves offer no account of their own right, they recognize no court superior to themselves which could legalize their demands as just claims or could unmask them as a usurpation. They come forward as an absolute, autonomous, final court. Thereby, however, they themselves conjure up the question of legitimacy.

What is the nature of the authority of moral principles? Is it a genuine, really absolute authority? Or is it relative to times and interpretations? Are ethical laws absolute? Or do they come into existence, and can they sink back into Non-Being and into oblivion? For example, is the commandment “Love thy neighbour” super-temporal and eternal? Is its validity independent of whether or not men revere it and aspire to fulfil it?

Evidently the question is not to be solved by referring it to the historical fact that there have been times when man did not know this law. If it is absolute, that fact was only a fact of ignorance or of the moral immaturity of mankind, but not a refutation of the law. If, however, it be not absolute, the historical moment of its first appearance is the moment of the birth of an ethical principle.

Facts, therefore, can here teach us nothing; just as, in general, facts never can decide a question of right.

These two contradictory interpretations confront each other: the one absolutistic, aprioristic; the other relativistic, historically genetic.

Which of the two is right depends upon which, in its consequences, is tenable as a theory. If moral commandments are absolute, it is necessary to prove the absolute in them to be an autonomous, undeniably certain principle. But, contrariwise, if they have come into being, it is necessary to show how their genesis is to be understood and how with it the positive right to acceptation and the appearance of absoluteness arise. From the time of the Sophists, who were the first to distinguish between what is øύσει and what is θέÉσει, this question has never ceased to attract attention; and it rightly stands at the centre of every conflict of opinions and theories.

(b) ETHICAL RELATIVISM

This question is definitive as to the essential nature of philosophical ethics. If moral commandments have come into being, they are the work of man; human thought has the power to raise up and overthrow them. In that case, philosophical thought also has the power to issue commandments, just as political thought has the power to issue laws; consequently, positive law and positive morality stand on the same level. Ethics then is “practical philosophy” in the normative sense, and the claim to declare what ought to happen is no empty presumption. For the principles of the Ought must be invented, devised. Their place of origin is the laboratory of ethical thought.

Even if it is a fact that norms commonly arise and acquire acceptation, but do so apart from philosophical reflection and prior to it in time, their entire vindication would still devolve upon philosophical ethics. For to it as intellectual referee would belong the task of reviewing the norms, of weighing them in the scales, of acknowledging or discarding them. Ethical thought would be the appointed law-giver of human life, would have the power and the duty of declaring the truth to man.

That philosophical ethics does not actually assume this enormous responsibility can easily be apprehended in a vague way; but it needs a more rigid proof from the structure of ethical phenomena. This will of itself be forthcoming with increasing certainty in the course of further investigation.

But what is clear immediately and without proof is that no philosophical ethics, even if such a vindication really devolved upon it, could sustain it. For human thought is exactly as relative as the norms, the relativity of which it should overcome. Ethical theories diverge from one another to exactly the same degree as the varying norms of positive morality. If ethics wished to take up this impossible task in earnest, it must needs become guilty of the same arrogance which it would have to unmask in those norms which have sprung up.

Rather it must itself avoid the pretention of absoluteness, which it attacks in them. On this point there can be no serious doubt.

(c) ETHICAL ABSOLUTISM

It is otherwise, if moral commandments are absolute. There is then nothing for philosophy to do but to establish and present them clearly, to seek the inner grounds for their absoluteness and to bring these into the light. For here thought is only a reproduction of that which is pre-figured, and ethics is contemplative, not normative; it is pure theory of the practical, not itself “practical philosophy.” It stands apart from life, has no influence, cannot teach what we ought to do; it cannot revise, form or re-form, and it assumes no responsibility. It has no actuality, but follows real life only at a serene distance. Its value exists only for itself, for the thought-structure as such, not for life.

But this again cannot be the true situation. It is true that philosophy does not in general guide actual life. But if therein lay the limit to significant philosophical enterprise, why does not the very simple knowledge of the limit check the enterprise once for all? Why does not the long series of philosophers break off, who from ethical reflection and insight expect directive illumination? Is this an ominous aberration, a shadow of that arrogance of the legislator’s self-glorification? Or, indeed, is there here a hidden reason which ever anew deludes the earnest seeker with the autonomy which he does not possess?

Is not the reverse in reality true? Is not this deeper insight nevertheless somehow a guide and builder of life for those who take up seriously the problem of moral commandments? And are not teaching and learning here exactly that which this guidance and edification introduce into the life of others? If one looks to the philosophical science of the ancients, one cannot doubt that this phenomenon is a fact, and that in many ages it has had no narrow scope among the educated. The belief then will not die out, that instruction and salvation must come from the depths of philosophical insight.

And must one not say: even if that phenomenon should be questionable and this belief vain, still we must, in spite thereof, categorically demand instruction and normative guidance from philosophy? Is not exactly this its meaning and its Ought? It is an undeniable fact that of ethical commandments there are many, differing according to time and people, and all presenting themselves as of equal authority, whereby their claims to absoluteness are contradicted. Since, therefore, there are as many historical errors as there are positive laws, a categorical demand must be made for a court of appeal which separates, sifts, restrains arrogance—even if it cannot itself produce anything better.

Philosophy can be the only court. Every other would once more be a presumptuous authority. By its very nature philosophy is the court which judges with understanding and according to principles. And even if it should not be so as yet, it is its essential nature to be so. Therefore it must become so. It is the appointed court of appeal.

CHAPTER II

CAN VIRTUE BE TAUGHT?

(a) THE PROPOSITION OF SOCRATES

BUT how then is the practical and normative character of ethics to be understood? And how is it to be defined? Ethics cannot assume the defence of commandments. It cannot be positive legislation. What competence has it then of a practical kind?

The same problem was involved in the initial question of ancient ethics: Can virtue be taught ? The ancients decided it almost without exception in the affirmative. Their fundamental thought was intellectualistic. It is best known in its Socratic form. No one does evil for evil’s sake; a good which he is striving for always hovers before him. He can be mistaken only in what he holds to be good. It all depends on whether he knows what is good. If that is known to him, he cannot will the bad; thereby he would contradict himself. Hence the two fundamental propositions which rule the whole later ethics of antiquity are: Virtue is knowledge; and therefore, Virtue can be taught.

Even the Stoic doctrine of the emotions did not contradict this teaching. It is indeed the feelings which prevent the will from willing the good; they must on that account be destroyed. But feelings themselves are regarded from the intellectualist point of view—that is, as inadequate knowledge (α″λóγos ópμη⌢). The overcoming of them is none other than a knowing, the dominance of the logos.

Herein lies the extreme normative conception of ethics; not only is ethics competent to teach what ought to happen, but it also has the ability to determine volition and action. The morally bad man is the ignorant man, the good man is he that is wise. The ideal of the wise man dominates ethics.

(b) THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION OF “SIN”

Christian ethics subverts this doctrine by its concept of human weakness and the power of evil.

Man knows the commandment of God, but he nevertheless transgresses it. He has not the power to fulfil it, his knowledge is impotent, he “sins.” One may describe the concept of sin as the specially revolutionizing factor in Christian ethics. Sin is neither a mere mistake nor simply guilt. It is a determining, seductive power in life. Certainly upon man falls the consequence—the wages of sin—but he is not its master. He must give way to it. The ancient Greek is indeed also aware of being overcome; but he is overcome by feeling, and the feeling is his ignorance. But the Christian is convinced from the first that it does not rest with him. For it is not a question of knowledge. It is a question as to the ability or inability to follow the better knowledge. For man does not necessarily follow it. Much more, once he knows the law, he still has to decide for or against it. There is a dark irrational power which takes part in this decision. It is the stronger power. Man has not the strength to wrench himself free from it. The flesh is weak. God alone can help and can deliver from the evil power.

It is a matter of indifference how one metaphysically interprets the power of evil, whether as devil or as matter, as an anti-moral impulse or as radical evil. The fact is always the same; and it contains, just as does the proposition of Socrates, a fragment of truth which is not to be lost. It is the antithesis of the doctrine of Socrates. Translated into the language of the ancients it reads: Virtue cannot be taught; for only knowledge can indeed be taught, but knowledge does not avail. In the language of our present-day concepts it is: Ethics can indeed teach us what we ought to do, but the teaching is powerless, man cannot follow it. Ethics is certainly normative in idea, but not in reality. It does not determine and guide man in life, it is not practical. There is no practical philosophy. Religion alone is practical.

The latter statements express a view which, once more, shoots far beyond the mark. Although the overcoming of human weakness and of the power of evil may be a question by itself, which is outside the question whether virtue can be taught, we nevertheless must know the moral commandments beforehand; we must in some form know what is good, and what is evil, in order to be confronted by a decision. Although virtue “is” not knowledge, a knowing must belong to it. And in so far as man does not possess this knowledge, the task of ethics is to give it to him. It must confront him with the decision for or against what is presented. It would have to point out the moral commandments to him.

This presentation of the problem is not changed when we interpret it in the conceptual language of religion. Here the law given of God plays the rôe of the norms. The law abides, even in the work of redemption: “I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.” As the first condition, man must be confronted with the law. His failure is failure before it. But the representation of God, as law-giver, is not a disavowal of ethics as man’s recognition of the norm, but is the strongest acknowledgment of the absoluteness of its content. The authority of the law-giver is the form of this absoluteness. Here the autonomy of the moral consciousness is transferred to God. Whether this transference corresponds to the phenomenon, whether man does not thereby deprive himself of his birthright, is not the question here. It belongs indeed in its essence to the concept of sin. Sin is not guilt before men or before one’s own conscience, but guilt before God. In this sense sin is no longer an ethical concept and has no connection with the question before us.

(c) SCHOPENHAUER’S PURELY THEORETICAL ETHICS

With both these conceptions, the ancient and the Christian, we can link up a longer series of further gradations of the normative. But for our problem only the extreme case is of importance—the complete disappearance of the normative. Schopenhauer was the best representative of an ethics of this kind.

According to his view, ethics as a philosophical discipline is ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Transaction Introduction
• Editor’s Introduction
• Translator’s Preface
• Foreword
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part I: The Structure of the Ethical Phenomenon - (Phenomenology of Morals)
• Index