{"corpus":"steiner","locus":"GA 176/1917-07-03/p018","lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"text":"All the modern views on ethics are contrary to that of Franz Brentano. He sought deeper reasons. Pleasure and displeasure, he said, merely confirm that an ethical judgment has been made. As far as the beautiful is concerned, we are justified in saying that beauty is a source of pleasure, ugliness of displeasure. However, we should be aware that what determines us when it is a question of ethics, of morality, is a much deeper impulse than the one that influences us in assessing the beautiful. That was Brentano's view of ethics, and each year he sought to reaffirm it to the law students. He also spoke of his principle of ethics in his beautiful public lecture entitled “Natural Sanction of Law and Morality.”[^5] The circumstances that led Franz Brentano to give this lecture are interesting. The famous legislator Ihering had spoken at a meeting about legal concepts being fluid, by which he meant that concepts of law and rights cannot be understood in an absolute sense because their meaning continually changes in the course of time.[^6] They can be understood only if viewed historically. In other words, if we look back to the time when cannibalism was customary, we have no right to say that one ought not to eat people. We have no right to say that our concepts of morals should have prevailed, for our concepts would at that time have been wrong. Cannibalism was right then; it is only in the course of time that our view of it has changed. Our sympathy must therefore lie with the cannibals, not with those who refrained from the practice! That is, of course, an extreme example, but it does illustrate the essence of Ihering's view. The important point to him was that concepts of law and morality have changed in the course of human evolution which proves that they are in a state of flux.","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"title":"Lecture V","site_heading":"Franz Brentano's Struggle: Truth, Goodness, and Spiritual Science","site_heading_note":"A heading the site wrote for this unit from a summary of it; not in the edition, and not the words of Rudolf Steiner or of the translator. Cite the unit by its title and locus, never by this heading, and do not quote it.","date":"1917-07-03","location":null,"word_count":317,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/176/1917-07-03/p018","alignment_confidence":"high","alignment_reason":"beads:length","two_voice_volume":false,"translation_credit":{"scope":"unit","status":"established","translator":"Rita Stebbing","identified_edition":"AP1987","book_title":"Aspects of Human Evolution","publisher":"Anthroposophic Press","publisher_inferred":true,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA176/English/AP1987/19170703p01.html","evidence":"lecture_page_line","publisher_note":"The publisher is inferred from the edition code in this lecture's source URL, not stated by the source page. The translator IS verified for this lecture: its own source names the translator (evidence: the lecture's page, rsarchive's lecture list, or the cover of the book it was published in), and that page's text was matched against this unit (see match_score and source_url). Cite the translator with confidence; attribute the publisher only as probable."},"edition_coverage":{"de":["original"],"en":["English"]},"available_versions":[{"lang":"de","edition":"original","edition_basis":null,"is_original":true,"is_default_edition":true,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/176/1917-07-03/p018"},{"lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/176/1917-07-03/p018","paragraph_aligned":true}],"record":{"record_type":"unknown","scope":"volume","note":"How this text was taken down (shorthand transcript, listeners' notes or manuscript) is not on record here. Unknown is not an assurance of a stenogram: check the edition's own notes before resting an argument on one word.","evidence":null,"evidence_translation":null,"evidence_source":null},"german_anchor":{"de_prefix":"1917-07-03","de_passages":[{"locus":"GA 176/1917-07-03/p016","url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/176/1917-07-03/p016"}],"bead_confidence":"high","pairing_state":"proposed","verified":false,"length_check":{"de_words":455,"en_words":442,"ratio":0.97,"partial":false},"correspondence":"established","note":"English passage numbering is edition-relative, so the same number need not name the same paragraph in the German. The German original passage(s) above are the edition-invariant anchor — fetch them (lang='de') to verify wording before quoting across editions."},"paired_german":{"status":"paired","german":[{"locus":"GA 176/1917-07-03/p016","passage_number":16,"text":"Alledem was da eigentlich als ethische Ansichten in der neueren Zeit lebte, widersprach Franz Brentano. Er suchte nach einer tieferen Quelle, denn er sagte: Gefallen und Mißfallen, das begründet eigentlich nur ein ästhetisches Urteil. Bei dem Schönen können wir uns mit Recht sagen: Dasjenige ist schön, was uns gefällt, dasjenige ist häßlich, was uns mißfällt. Aber wir müssen sehr wohl verspüren, daß zum Ethischen, zum Moralischen noch ein anderer Impuls notwendig ist als derjenige, der bloß beim Schönen in uns maßgebend ist. — So sagte sich Brentano, und so wollte er denn jedes Jahr für Juristen seine Ethik begründen. Und dann hat er auch öffentlich in seinem sehr schönen Vortrage diese Begründung der Ethik ausgesprochen. «Von der natürlichen Sanktion für recht und sittlich» heißt dieser Vortrag. Es ist schon die Veranlassung sehr interessant, auf welche hin Franz Brentano diesen Vortrag gehalten hat. Der berühmte Rechtslehrer Ihering hat die Flüssigkeit der Rechtsbegriffe in einem Verein vertreten, die Flüssigkeit der Rechtsbegriffe, das heißt die Anschauung, daß das Recht nicht eigentlich etwas ist, von dem man im absoluten Sinne sprechen kann, sondern etwas, das sich im Verlaufe der Entwickelungsgeschichte der Menschheit fortwährend ändert. Man hätte eigentlich keine Möglichkeit, anders als im geschichtlichen Sinne von den Dingen zu sprechen. Geht man zurück in die Zeit, in der die Menschenfresserei üblich war, so hat man kein Recht zu sagen, für diese Zeit wären unsere Rechts- oder Sittlichkeitsbegriffe maßgebend, daß man nicht die Menschen auffrißt. Das wäre dazumal falsch gewesen. Dazumal war eben richtig die Menschenfresserei, das hat sich nur geändert im Laufe der Zeit. Wir müßten also sympathisieren für diejenige Zeit nicht mit denen, die nicht Menschenfresserei trieben, sondern wir müßten geradezu mit den Menschenfressern sympathisieren. Nun, das ist der radikalste Fall. Aber Sie sehen schon, worauf es Ihering ankommt. Es kommt nach Ihering darauf an, daß die Rechts- und Sittlichkeitsbegriffe im Laufe der Menschheitsentwickelung sich ändern, daß sie also flüssig seien. Das leuchtete Brentano durchaus nicht ein. Er wollte einen gewissen absoluten Quell des Sittlichen finden. Für die Wahrheit hat er die Evidenz hingestellt; dasjenige, was in unmittelbar klarer Anschaulichkeit seelisch einleuchtet, ist wahr. Also das richtige Urteil ist wahr. Was ist gut? Darauf fand Brentano, wiederum wirklich in jahrzehntelangem Ringen, eine ebenso, ich möchte sagen, abstrakte Antwort. Er sagte: Erfließend ist das Gute und das Schlechte aus den Gemütsbewegungen heraus. Die Gemütsbewegungen leben in Lieben und Hassen. Das Gute ist dasjenige, welches richtig geliebt wird; das Liebenswerte ist das Gute. Also dasjenige, was vom Menschen in der richtigen Weise geliebt wird, ist das Gute. Und nun bemüht er sich zu zeigen, wie in gewissen einzelnen Fällen der Mensch richtig lieben kann. So, wie er bezüglich der Wahrheit richtig urteilen soll, so soll er bezüglich des Guten richtig lieben.","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"word_count":455,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/176/1917-07-03/p016"}],"english":["GA 176/1917-07-03/p018","GA 176/1917-07-03/p019"],"method":"length","confidence":"high","correspondence":"established","length_check":{"de_words":455,"en_words":442,"ratio":0.97,"partial":false},"pairing_state":"proposed","verified":false},"witness_completeness":{"ratio":0.97,"band":"comparable","note":null,"word_count":8951,"original_word_count":9212,"may_be_abridged":false},"witness_quality":{"translator":{"scope":"unit","status":"recorded","translator":"Rita Stebbing","identified_edition":"AP1987","book_title":"Aspects of Human Evolution","publisher":"Anthroposophic Press","publisher_inferred":true,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA176/English/AP1987/19170703p01.html","evidence":"lecture_page_line","publisher_note":"The publisher is inferred from the edition code in this lecture's source URL, not stated by the source page. The translator IS verified for this lecture: its own source names the translator (evidence: the lecture's page, rsarchive's lecture list, or the cover of the book it was published in), and that page's text was matched against this unit (see match_score and source_url). Cite the translator with confidence; attribute the publisher only as probable."},"entity_parity":{"status":"ok","checked_against":["GA 176/1917-07-03/p016"],"missing_from_translation":[],"present_only_in_translation":[],"bead_confidence":"high","note":"Every load-bearing name in the German counterpart appears in this English passage. That is a check on NAMES only: a translation can keep every name and still reverse who acts on whom, change a number, or soften a claim. Read the German for anything you intend to rest an argument on."},"note":"quote_safe certifies the bytes of this text. This block is about the translation as a WITNESS: who made it, and whether it carries the same names as the original. See witness_completeness for how much of the original this witness holds."}}