37. Bartholomew Carneri The Ethicist of Darwinism

What would become of the moral order of the world if the conviction were to gain ground in the widest circles that man had gradually evolved from ape-like animals through purely natural forces? This question arose disturbingly in many minds when, after the publication of Charles Darwin's great scientific reform work "On the Origin of Species in the Animal and Vegetable Kingdoms by Means of Natural Breeding", bold thinkers drew the necessary conclusion that the great scientist's conception should not stop at man, but that the idea of the animal origin of the most perfect living being should henceforth be regarded as a certain component of the world view. The number of far-sighted personalities who, in the course of the last four decades, have opposed the opinion that Darwinism is dangerous for the moral and social development of mankind with apt reasons is not small. However, the first person in German intellectual life to take a comprehensive view of the ethical world of thought on the basis of the new scientific insights was the Austrian thinker Bartholomäus Carneri.

Eleven years after Darwin's appearance, he presented the world with his book "Sittlichkeit und Darwinismus. Three Books of Ethics" (Vienna 1871). Since then, he has constantly endeavored to expand his basic ideas in all directions.¹ Today, when we have forty years of Darwinism behind us, we must confess to ourselves in an unbiased survey of the literature under consideration that no one has treated the field of ethics in the sense of the new school of thought so thoroughly, so flawlessly and so perfectly. If this is not yet sufficiently appreciated everywhere where it should be, it is for no other reason than that the minds are still too busy expanding the insights of Darwinism in the purely scientific field and securing them against attacks. They are therefore not yet able to give Darwinian ethics the full attention it deserves. However, there can be no doubt that in the not too distant future, when we no longer speak of the natural theory of Darwinism, but of its comprehensive world view, Carneri's achievements will be described as those which played an outstanding part in the foundation of this world view.

What enabled Carneri to place moral concepts on such a new foundation was the impartiality with which he confronted Darwinism and the intellectual acuity that immediately allowed him to recognize the full implications of the new views for human life. He did not allow any objections to deter him from his conviction that Darwinism was the direction in which thinking would have to move in the future. "Of course, everyone will always be free to behave like an ostrich towards Darwinism; if, apart from the head, he also has the stomach in common with his role model and can digest the food that is served to him daily from the kitchen of the so-called good old days, then we wish him luck with his position. But as long as we cannot think that man has rallied himself to walk upright, to bend down, we look the newest time full in the face; and the firmer our image becomes, the brighter its eye appears to us, the milder its smile. According to the same laws that man rose out of the animal world in the "battle for Daseim", we see the concept of morality rising on the horizon of humanity as a sun, before whose rays many a gaze too accustomed to darkness may shrink back, the brightest pride of vain selfishness may fade away as pale tinsel, but which announces the day to this earth, the fulfillment of the promise of that morning on which first an eye, in the elation of awakened self-consciousness, stripping off the painful rigidity that never leaves the face of the animal, - looked out laughing into the changing life" (Sittlichkeit und Darwinismus,. 14). Thus Carneri himself speaks about the way of thinking that led him to derive Darwinism from the field of natural science into that of the moral conduct of human life. - This impartiality was combined with a high degree of familiarity in Carneri's mind with the philosophical ideas of idealistic thinkers. Such a person was a rarity at the time in which his views matured - in the sixties. The "conceptual poetry" of Hegel and Spinoza was looked down upon with disdain and it was believed that one-sided observation of sensory facts alone could lead to certain knowledge. For Carneri, it is a firm basis of thought that matter contains within itself all the forces that produce all world events, from simple spatial movement to the most highly developed achievements of the spirit. But he is also perfectly clear about the fact that the laws of nature, which relate to physical, material processes, cannot explain spiritual processes. He is completely convinced that all life is a chemical process. "Digestion in man is such a process as the nourishment of the plant" (Morality and Darwinism, p.46). At the same time, however, he emphasizes that the chemical process must rise to a higher level if it is to become life. "Life is a chemical process of its own kind, it is the individual or chemical process that has become an individual. For the chemical process can reach a point at which it can dispense with certain conditions which it has hitherto required ... (Morality and Darwinism, p.14). "We conceive of matter insofar as the phenomena resulting from its divisibility and movement act physically, that is, as mass, on our senses. If the division or differentiation goes so far that the resulting phenomena are no longer perceptible to the senses, but only to the mind, then the effect of matter is a spiritual one" (Grundlegung der Ethik, p.30). The "inseparability of the spirit from corporeality" is thus fully recognized, but at the same time the spiritual, despite its origin from the corporeal, is assured of its independent significance beyond the material. Carneri thus preserves the right of the idealistic approach to the spiritual phenomena of matter alongside the materialistic approach, which is to be limited to that which is accessible to the senses alone. Only a thinker who drew his education from the idealistic view of the world, and who could therefore leave the ground of materialism in his contemplation even at the moment when the material process ascends to the spiritual, was called upon to develop the ethics of Darwinism. Carneri's conception of moral forces is an idealistic one, even though he does not seek the original root of morality anywhere other than where the origin of physical and chemical processes is to be found. "With the assumption of the inseparability of force and substance, spirit and matter, all free forces in the narrower sense are given up, hence also the spirit as something existing independently of the body; with this, however, the spirit is as little given up as force. Spiritualism is finished, but not yet idealism; this remains the field of philosophy, while natural science is at home in realism alone" (Sittlichkeit und Darwinismus,.8).

As a thinker, Carneri is an artist of the highest order. He has a rare ability to present the content of his concepts in a vividly perfect way. The way he rises from the simple natural phenomena that we perceive with our senses to the ideas of morality is a masterly achievement of this kind. We see the chemical processes individualize themselves in a conceptual and descriptive form on the basis of his arguments, becoming a living individual, which then no longer receives an effect from outside as an inorganic movement, but allows it to become a sensation. "The most important characteristic of all living things and unique to them is sensation. It is the form in which that which we call reaction in the rest of nature occurs in all living things. Sensation is actually only the ability to react, but to a higher kind of reaction... Sensation is to life in the narrower sense what divisibility is to matter" (Grundlegung der Ethik, p. 43). In an equally vivid manner, Carneri ascends to the further ideas that enable us to grasp the idea of life. "Sensation... is presented to the individual as a whole in the brain, as the organ in which the whole individual is centrally summarized. By thereby communicating a sensation to the individual, the sensation of the part is elevated to a sensation of the whole. This is why we call the conception a sensation of a higher kind. The individual feels it, it is a felt sensation or a feeling" (Grundliegung der Ethik, p.102). One sees the material gradually becoming spiritual along the lines of Carnerian concepts; one sees the material unfolding the spiritual phenomena out of itself. "Only with the awakening of consciousness does sensation become feeling, and only from then on does... the unfavorable become displeasure, the favorable becomes pleasure. Thus begins the life of the soul in its higher meaning" (Grundlegung der Ethik, p.123). The processes of nature reach the highest degree of individualization in human self-consciousness. The processes of nature have torn themselves away from their mother earth; they no longer look at an external process through the imagination; they look at themselves. This creates the appearance that the individualized natural process is an independent spiritual entity with a completely different origin than the other material processes. "What creates the appearance in mental activity as if man were a double being, as if the earthly body were glowing and illuminated by a supernatural spark, is a deception" (Grundlegung der Ethik, p.136). What we perceive within ourselves is a natural process like any other material process. And it is here - within this natural process that has been heightened to self-consciousness - that the world of the moral is born. The moral is only the continuation of purely natural processes. It can therefore not be a question of what man should recognize as moral. Such morality would have to be given to him from somewhere; and only then would the question arise: Can man obey moral commandments that come to him from outside by virtue of his natural powers? The question can only be this: What concepts of morality are born when the general natural process rises to the level of human self-consciousness? As little sense as it makes to say that a flower should be this way or that way, as little sense does it make to assert that man should do this or that. Carneri sharply contrasts his concept of ethics with that of other thinkers. "While moral philosophy lays down certain moral laws and commands them to be observed so that man may be what he ought to be, ethics develops man as he is, limiting itself to showing him what he can still become: there are duties, the observance of which penalties seek to enforce, here there is an ideal from which all compulsion would distract, because the approach is only by way of knowledge and freedom" (Sittlichkeit und Darwinismus,.1). That which man strives for when he rises above the level of animality, that on which everything else depends, is happiness. "The ideal of happiness is changeable and capable of continual refinement; but under all circumstances the pursuit of happiness is the basic impulse of all human endeavors. And nothing is more erroneous than the opinion that this instinct is unworthy of man, which places him on an equal footing with the animal. This instinct is alien to the animal: it knows only the instinct of self-preservation, and to elevate it to the instinct of happiness is the basic condition of human self-consciousness" (Grundlegung der Ethik, p.147). Where the bliss instinct awakens on the ladder of living becoming, the formerly indifferent natural process begins to be a moral action. All higher moral ideas have their origin in the striving for happiness. "The martyr who lays down his life here for his scientific convictions, there for his faith in God, has nothing else in mind but his happiness: the former finds it in his loyalty to his convictions, the latter seeks it in a better world. Bliss is the ultimate goal for all of them, and however different the image that the individual forms of it may be, from the crudest times to the most educated, it is the beginning and end of the sentient being's thinking and feeling. It is the instinct of self-preservation, whose innumerable emanations gather at this one point to reflect as many desires as there are individuals" (Grundlegung der Ethik, p. 146).

By breaking away from the mother earth of nature, man becomes an independent, a free being. It is proof of how deeply Carneri has settled into the spirit of Darwinism that he has given the concept of freedom a version that is compatible with scientific ideas. Is there still a place for freedom within the Darwinian worldview? Carneri answers "yes". It is true that everything that happens, including every human action, is subject to the eternal, iron laws of nature. But from the point at which man detaches himself from the rest of nature, the laws of nature become the laws of his own being. "His further development is his own work, and what kept him on the path of progress was the power and gradual clarification of his desires" (Grundlegung der Ethik, p.143). And the laws of nature, which man has made the content of his being, are his thoughts and ideas. They are nothing other than the highly heightened, fully developed processes of nature. Man is not free by the fact that he can or cannot obey arbitrary moral commandments taken from an unknown place, but by the fact that he continues the development of nature as his own work. Carneri expresses this view with perfect clarity: "Man is indeed bound by the laws of nature; but nature knows nothing of man and his laws. Only in man does she bring it to thought. It does not even care about man; and only because man is bound to the means he finds in nature to achieve his ends, and he paves his way to his goal accordingly, do some means look as if they had been brought to him by nature for this or that purpose" (Der Mensch als Selbstzweck,.89). If the laws of nature are to be effective in man, he must permeate himself with them, they must become the content of his thinking. Man can only continue the work of nature in his moral actions if he penetrates into the meaning of natural existence, if he strives for knowledge of natural phenomena. Carneri therefore seeks the basis of morality in knowledge. It is not some moral commandments hanging in the air, but only the truth that can lead man to act morally. Only thinking that agrees with "the truth, that recognizes things in their necessity and thereby makes the general law its own, elevates the intellect to reason, the will to freedom. Man wills only insofar as he knows. Hence the infinite value of true intelligence. We do not fail to recognize the greatness of the sacrifices which the new teaching demands of the human heart; but these sacrifices are no longer sacrifices as soon as we become aware of the greatness of the task with which the new teaching approaches the human spirit. The barrier that commanded thought like no other has fallen, and it is indeed a great bias to want to see in it an impairment of the demands of thought" (Sittlichkeit und Darwinismus, p. 13f.). The human being who sets himself goals and ideals for his actions cannot, however, stop at mere natural principles in his thinking. Otherwise his morality would not be a continuation, but a mere copy of natural events. As a moral thinker, man is at the same time a creator. Moral ideas arise from his thinking as new creations. In order for his thinking to become a moral force, it undergoes an enhancement. It becomes a fantasy that provides action with its goals. In the ethical imagination Carneri finds the new concept that must take the place of the old moral commandments. It is the imagination that "breathes living warmth into our thinking" and which "interacting with ideas, creates the ideal" (Grundlegung der Ethik, p.370f.).

In this way, Carneri reaches the highest human concepts, even though he takes the simplest scientific ideas as his starting point. He endeavors to preserve the character of the spiritual, the ideality of the moral, despite his strict adherence to Darwinism. He is an enemy of any ambiguity in concepts. This is why, in his essay "Sensation and Consciousness" (1893), he energetically protested against the vagueness of a world view that seeks to do justice to the connection between spirit and nature by saying: "No spirit without matter, but also no matter without spirit." Carneri counters the many erroneous interpretations of Goethe's sentence: "The conviction that there is no spirit without matter, that is, that all spiritual activity is bound to a material activity, with the end of which it also reaches its end, is based on experience; while nothing in this experience suggests that spirit is connected to matter at all." According to Carneri's view, spirit does not belong to matter as such, but to the substance organized into higher levels of activity. It is not matter that has spirit, but the organization that matter has assumed is the basis for the appearance of spirit. If one wanted to call matter animated, one would be misleading, like someone who ascribed the ability to tell time not to the mechanism of the clock, but to the metals that are worked into it. Even if one has to admit that Haeckel's writings contain an expression of the scientific way of thinking that should not be misunderstood in the way Carneri suggests, one may nevertheless describe the aforementioned short work as one of the most valuable contributions to Darwinism because of its exemplary formulation of important concepts. The height to which Carneri's view of life rose through his work on ethics can be seen in his writings "Der Mensch als Selbstzweck" (1877) and "Der moderne Mensch. Attempts at a way of life" (1891). The fruits of a conviction drawn from Darwinism appear here as the noblest ideas about the world and man. And anyone who listened to Carneri back then, when he was a member of the Austrian House of Representatives, giving his speeches full of content and imbued with a high ethos, will never forget the impression he must have made. The image of a fighter for the truth, which he had before him at the moment when the fighter wanted to introduce the truth into life, must remain unforgettable.