BOOKS.
KANT'S THEORY OF ETHICS.*
WE welcome with much pleasure a third edition of Mr. Abbott's translation of Kant's Ethics. His carefully-made selection from the German philosopher's moral philosophy has been further added to in this edition, and now con- tains, as the translator considers, "the whole of Kant's works on the general theory of ethics." We have the Critique of Practical Reason, the Metaphyeic of Morale, the general introduction to the Metaphysische Anfangsgriinde der Sittenlehre, the preface to the Metaphysische Anfangsgriinde der Tugendlehre, the first portion of the Philosophische gionslehre, and the essay Ueber em n vermeintes Becht aue Menschenliebe zu liigen. The translation reads throughout with a fluency which makes it a bad compliment to compare it to the original. Indeed, those who had never addressed themselves to the task of deciphering Kant in his original German, might be tempted to a doubt as to the proverbial obscurity of his style if their acquaintance with it were gained solely by this English version. Mr. Abbott acts as interpreter as well as translator,—and this not by means of paraphrases expressing a meaning forced upon obscure passages by himself, but by that highest gift of the translator which enables him to emphasise a word or a thought which careful study has taught him to be important to the meaning, and which was shrouded in the original—whether by ambiguity in the phrase chosen, or by an ill-balanced construction of the sentence.
The difficulty which meets the reviewer of Kant's " Ethics " is not that the subject is exhausted, but rather that there is so much to be said that it is difficult to know where to begin ; and • Rant's Critique of Practical Reason, and Other Works on the Theory of Ethics. Translated by Thomas Singsmill Abbott, B.D. London : Longman,. ree3.
having begun, it is still more difficult to say anything worth
saying in comment upon a writer whose every page goes to the root of his subject, and yet keep within reasonable limits. We shall perhaps best satisfy the requirements of the case by presenting OUT readers with some extracts from his less known works upon subjects which engage the attention of philosophi-
cal readers and thinkers in these days, without any prolonged comment of our own.
Probably no moralist was ever sterner or more uncompro- mising than Kant in his resistance to all attempts either to explain or to explain away the Iiimple idea of the " good-will," --the will consistent in its devotion to duty. The slightest tinge of utilitarianism introduced into the conception of moral goodness sullied its purity in his eyes. Any reference to the consequences of acts was quite irrelevant to their intrinsic goodness, which consists solely and entirely in the purity of the agent's motive—in their being motived by the idea of duty. And it is curious to note how such a thinker as Mr. Herbert Spencer, who professes to represent in much of his speculative philosophy the outcome of Kant's teaching, stands in this matter at exactly opposite poles with him. With Kant morality is purely transcendental; with Spencer, it is purely empirical. In Kant's view motive is everything, and consequences nothing;
according to Spencer, the very meaning of goodness has to be explained by reference to its consequences. According to the German philosopher, intellectual analysis of the meaning of morality leads to an ultimate conception of the intrinsic worth .of the "good-will" and of the moral dignity of man,—a con- ception with regard to which it is equally abiurd to deny its reality or to attempt to explain its meaning in terms of any- thing else ; while the English moralist holds that a thorough- going inquiry leads to the conclusion that moral good- ness means only that which tends to greater duration and intensity of life in the race, and that the sense of duty is nothing but an inherited instinct enabling the individual to learn by a short cut what does so tend, and possessing a claim en him neither higher nor lower in kind than the instinct which prompts the hungry man to eat. This terrible collapse of all the elements necessary for a moral sentiment that should at once be lofty and reasonable, is reprobated by Kant in a passage quite as applicable to the evolutionist utilitarianism of Mr. Spencer or Mr. Leslie Stephen as to the older members of the school with whose works he was himself acquainted. He writes as follows :— " Every empirical element is not only incapable of being an aid to the principle of morality, but is even highly prejudicial to the parity -of morals; for the proper and inestimable worth of an absolutely -good will consists jest in this : that the principle of action is free from all influence of contingent grounds which experience alone can tarnish. We cannot too much or too often repeat our warning against this lax, and even mean, habit of thought which seeks for its principle amongst empirical motives and laws ; for human reason, in its weariness, is glad to rest on this pillow, and in a dream of sweet illusions (in which, instead of Juno, it embraces a cloud) it substi- tutes for morality a bastard patched up from limbs of various deriva- tion, which looks like anything one chooses to see in it; only not like virtue to one who has once beheld her in her true form."
It may, indeed, be said that the key-note of the "Metaphysic of Morals," from which we quote this passage, is its protest against 'explanations of morality in terms of experienced things. Not that Kant fails to give practical explanations of what is involved in morality ; but he insists that they are all based upon a priori conceptions, and are binding on all rational beings quite irre- spective of the special conditions of our planet. For example, speaking of the practical imperative—" so act as to treat humanity, whether in thine own person or in that of any other, in every case as an end withal, never as means only," he gives the following explanation :— "This principle, that humanity and generally every rational nature, is an end in itself (which is the supreme limiting condition of every man's freedom of action), is not borrowed from experience,—firstly, because it is universal, applying, as it does, to all rational beings 'whatever, and experience is not capable of determining anything about them ; secondly, because it does not present humanity as an end to men (subjectively), that is as an objeot which men do of them- selves actually adopt as an end ; but as an objective end, which most 88 a law constitute the supreme limiting condition of all our sub- jective ends, let them be what we will; it must, therefore, spring from pure reason."
And the principle here indicated is illustrated by another passage in the same work :—
"Nor could anything be more fatal to morality than that we should wish to derive it from examples. For every example of it that is set before me must be itself first tested by principles of morality, whether it is worthy to serve an an original example, i.e., as a pattern, but by no means can it authoritatively furnish the conception of morality. Even the Holy One of the Gospels mast first he compared with our ideal of moral perfection before we can recognise Him as snob; and 80 He says of Himself,—' Why call ye Me (whom you see) good ; none is good (the model of good) but God only (whom ye do not see) ?' But whence have we the conception of God as the supreme good ? Simply from the idea of moral perfection, which reason frames d priori and connects inseparably with the notion of a free will."
We quote, finally, a very remarkable extract from the • Tugend- lehre, which Mr. Abbott gives us in his Appendix, which our readers will be glad, in spite of its length, to see in its entirety. It is upon the conception of "conscience ;" and readers of Cardinal Newman's works will observe an almost startling simi- larity between these two great thinkers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in their language on this subject. We allude especially to the marked distinction which both of them draw between the merely intellectual perception of right and wrong—the "moral sense," as Cardinal Newman calls it—and the complex indications of personal obligation and responsi- bility which the individual conscience presents. And further, both the Cardinal and the Konigsberg. Professor, in language curiously similar, dwell upon the conception of an all-knowing and all-holy God, sitting in judgment over the human heart, as being the necessary complement to that sense of responsibility which conscience immediately produces. Here are Kant's words :— " The consciousness of an internal tribunal in man (before which his thoughts accuse or excuse one another ') is Conscience. Every man has a conscience, and finds himself observed by an inward judge which threatens slid keeps him in awe (reverence combined with fear) ; and this power which watches over the laws within him is not something which he himself (arbitrarily) makes, but it is incorporated in his being. It follows him like his shadow, when he thinks to escape. He may, indeed, atupify himself with pleasures and distract- lions, but cannot avoid now and then coming to himself or awaking, and then he at once perceives its awful voice. In his utmost depravity he may indeed pay no attention to it, but he cannot avoid hearing it. Now this original intellectual and (as a conception of duty) moral capacity called conscience has this peculiarity in it, that although its business is a business of man with himself, yet he finds himself compelled by his reason to transact it as if -at the command of another person. For the transaction here is the conduct of a trial (cause) before a tribunal. But that he who is accused by his con- science should be conceived as one and the same person with the judge, is an absurd, conception of a judicial Court; for then the complainant would always lose his case. Therefore, in all duties the conscience of the man must regard another than himself as the judge of his actions, if it is to avoid self-contradiction. Now, this other may be an actual or a merely ideal person, which reason frames to itself. Such an idealised person (the authorised judge of conscience) must be one who knows the heart; for the tribunal is set up in the inward part of man ; at the same time be must be also a/i-ob/iging ; that is, must be conceived as a person in respect of whom all duties are to be regarded as his commands, since conscience is the inward judge of all free actions. Now, since such a moral being must at the same time possess all power (in heaven and earth), since otherwise he could not give his commands their proper effect (which the office of judge necessarily requires), and since such amoral being possessing power over all is called God, hence conscience must be conceived as the subjective principle of a responsibility for one's deeds before God; nay, this latter concept is contained (though it be only obscurely) in every moral self-consciousness."
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