44. Old and New Moral Concepts

The word "modern" is on everyone's lips today. Every moment a "new thing" is discovered in this or that area of human creativity, or at least a promising attempt at it is noticed. Most of these discoveries, however, do not lead the discerning person pursuing the matter to something really new, but simply to the lack of historical education of the discoverers. If those who currently influence public opinion through speech and writing had the same degree of knowledge and discernment as they do hubris and boldness in their claims, ninety-eight times out of a hundred they would use terms that have something to do with the matter itself where the words "new" and "modern" now have to stand in.

I don't want to join in the wild cries of the uneducated and immature standard-bearers of "modernity" when I speak here of a "new" morality in contrast to the old. But I am convinced that our time imperatively demands that we accelerate the change in views and ways of life that has been taking place very slowly for a long time. Some branches of culture are already imbued with the spirit that expresses itself in this demand; a clear awareness of the main characteristics of the change is not often to be found.

I find a simple expression for the basic trait of a truly future-worthy striving in the following sentence: Today we seek to replace all otherworldly and extra-worldly driving forces with those that lie within the world. In the past, transcendental powers were sought to explain the phenomena of existence. Revelation, mystical vision or metaphysical speculation were supposed to lead to knowledge of higher beings. At present, we strive to find the means to explain the world in the world itself.

It is only ever necessary to interpret these propositions in the right way, and one will find that they indicate the characteristic feature of a spiritual revolution that is in full swing. Science is increasingly turning away from the metaphysical approach and seeking its explanatory principles within the realm of reality. Art strives to offer in its creations only that which is derived from nature and renounces the embodiment of supernatural ideas. However, in science as in art, this endeavor is associated with the danger of going astray. Some of our contemporaries have not escaped this danger. Instead of pursuing the traces of the spirit, which they once erroneously sought outside reality, they have now lost sight of everything ideal; and we must see how science is content with a mindless observation and recording of facts, art often with mere imitation of nature.

However, these are excesses that must be overcome by what is healthy in the whole direction. The significance of the movement lies in the rejection of that world view which regarded spirit and nature as two completely separate entities, and in the recognition of the proposition that both are only two sides, two manifestations of one entity. Replacing the two-world theory with the unified worldview is the signature of the new age.

The area where this view seems to encounter the most serious prejudices is that of human action. While some natural scientists are already wholeheartedly committed to it, and some aesthetes and art critics are more or less imbued with it, ethicists want nothing to do with it. Here, the belief in norms that are supposed to govern life like an otherworldly power still prevails, in laws that are not created within human nature, but that are given to our actions as a ready-made guideline. If one goes far enough, one admits that we do not owe these laws to the revelation of a supernatural power, but that they are innate to our soul. They are then not called divine commandments, but categorical imperatives. In any case, the human personality is conceived as consisting of two independent entities: the sensual nature with a sum of instincts and passions, and the spiritual principle that penetrates to the realization of moral ideas, through which the sensual element is to be controlled and restrained. This basic ethical view has found its harshest expression in Kant's philosophy. Just think of the well-known apostrophe to duty! "Duty! thou sublime great name, who dost not grasp in thyself anything popular that leads to ingratiation, but dost demand submission", who dost "merely set up a law that finds its way into the mind of its own accord and yet acquires reverence for itself against its will, before which all inclinations fall silent, even if they secretly work against it". In these words lies an autonomization of the moral commandments into a special power to which everything individual in man simply has to submit. Even if this power announces itself within the human personality, it has its origin outside. The commandments of this power are the moral ideals that can be codified as a system of duties. The followers of this school of thought regard those who base their actions on these ideals as good people. This doctrine can be called the ethics of motives. It has many followers among German philosophers. We encounter it in a very diluted form in the work of the Americans Coit and Salter. Coit says ("The Ethical Movement in Religion", translated by G. von Gizycki, p.7): "Every duty is to be done with the fervor of enthusiasm, with the feeling of its absolute and supreme value"; and Salter ("The Religion of Morals", translated by G. von Gizycki, p. 79): "A moral act must have been done out of principle". In addition to this ethic, there is another that takes into account not so much the motives as the results of our actions. Its followers ask about the greater or lesser benefit that an action brings and accordingly describe it as better or worse. They either look at the benefit for the individual or for the social whole. Accordingly, a distinction is made between individualistic and socialistic utilitarians. If the former refrain from establishing general principles, the observance of which should make the individual happy, they present themselves as one-sided representatives of individualistic ethics. They must be called one-sided because their own benefit is by no means the only goal of the active human individuality. It can also be in their nature to act selflessly. But when these individualistic or socialistic utilitarians derive norms to be followed from the nature of the individual or a group, they make the same mistake as the advocates of the concept of duty: they overlook the fact that all general rules and laws immediately prove to be a worthless phantom when man finds himself within living reality. Laws are abstractions, but actions always take place under very specific concrete conditions. Weighing up the various possibilities and choosing the most practical one in a given case is what we should do when it comes to action. An individual personality is always faced with a very specific situation and will make a decision according to the circumstances. In this case, a selfish action will be the right one, in another a selfless one; sometimes the interests of the individual will have to be taken into account, sometimes those of the whole. Those who unilaterally pay homage to egoism are just as wrong as those who praise compassion. For what is more important than the perception of one's own good or the good of others is the consideration of whether one or the other is more important under the given circumstances. When acting, it is not primarily a matter of feelings, not of selfish, not of selfless ones, but of the right judgment about what is to be done. It can happen that someone sees an action as right and carries it out while suppressing the strongest impulses of his compassion. But since there is no absolutely right judgment, but all truth is only conditionally valid, depending on the point of view of the person who pronounces it, a person's judgment about what to do in a particular case is also conditioned by his particular relationship to the world. In exactly the same situation, two people will act differently because, depending on their character, experience and education, they have different concepts of what their task is in a given case.

Anyone who understands that the judgment of a specific case is the decisive factor in an action can only advocate an individualistic view of ethics. Only the right view in a given situation and no fixed norm helps to form such a judgment. General laws can only be derived from the facts, but facts are only created through the action of man. These are the prerequisites of abstract rules.

If we derive certain general characteristics of individuals, peoples and ages from the common and lawful nature of human action, we obtain ethics, not as a science of moral norms, but as a natural doctrine of morality. The laws derived from this relate to individual human action in exactly the same way as the laws of nature relate to a particular phenomenon in nature.

To present ethics as a normative science is to completely misjudge the nature of a science. Natural science sees its progress in the fact that it has overcome the view that general norms, types, are realized in individual phenomena according to the principle of expediency. It investigates the real foundations of phenomena. Only when ethics has reached the point where it asks not about general moral ideals, but about the real facts of action that lie in the concrete individuality of man, only then can it be regarded as a science on a par with natural science.