TRUE to the modern interest in everything subjective, the ethical philosophy of the nineteenth century spent itself in an analysis of the moral consciousness and its acts. It was far from troubling itself about the objective contents of moral claims, commandments and values. There stood Nietzsche, a solitary figure, warning us with his startling assertion that we have never yet known what good and evil are. Scarcely listened to, misinterpreted by over-hasty disciples as well as by over-hasty critics, his momentous call for a new inspection of values died away. It has taken decades for the capacity to develop within us, whereby, from out the distance which has already become historic, we could understand his call. And only in our day, slowly and against great odds, the consciousness of a new phase in the ethical problem manifests itself, the supreme concern of which is once more the contents, the substance, of ethical Being and Not-Being.
In the following investigation I have undertaken to go counter to the long-settled tradition and to take account of the new order of things, in that I have chosen as my central task an analysis of the contents of values. I have done so in the belief that only in this way will it be possible in the future to grapple afresh with the problems of conduct. For, while these certainly are not to be neglected, they may very well for a time be left in the background, in order that other problems may be brought forward, which have been ignored and yet for the moment are most urgent.
So at least I understand the present situation. Nor am I alone in this. Max Scheler has rendered us the service of making it obvious to us. The idea of a concrete ethics of values is far from being submerged in his criticism of Kant’s formalism. It is indeed the fulfilment of that ethical apriorism which even in Kant formed the essence of the subject. Epoch-making judgments are recognized by their power to fuse organically apparently heterogeneous and conflicting factors. Concrete ethics, by showing us the gates to the kingdom of values, achieves the synthesis of two fundamental concepts which had historically grown up in very different fields, and in sharp contrast to each other. One was the Kantian apriority of the moral law and the other the manifoldness of values which Nietzsche—though only from a distance—had discerned. Nietzsche was the first to see the rich plenitude of the ethical cosmos, but with him it melted away in historical relativism. On the other hand, Kant had, in the apriority of the moral law, a well-considered and unified knowledge of the absoluteness of genuine ethical standards; he lacked only the concrete perception and the breadth of sympathy which would have given this knowledge full recognition. The concrete ethics of value is the historical reunion of factors which have really been intimately associated from the beginning. Indeed it is, above all, the rediscovery of their inherent connection. It gives back to ethical apriorism its original richness of content, while to the consciousness of value it gives the certainty of a firm foothold in the midst of the relativity of human valuations.
Herewith our path is indicated. It is, however, one thing to point it out, and another to follow it. Neither Scheler nor anyone else has trodden it, at least not in ethics proper, and this is surely no mere chance. It simply shows that in the realm of values we are only novices, and that with this fresh insight, which at first looked like finality, we stand again at the very beginning of a work the greatness of which is difficult to measure.
This situation is deeply significant for the new orientation of the problem. It is the more serious because it is in this untrodden realm that we deal with decisive discoveries, con-cerning, for instance, the meaning and contents of moral goodness itself. In retrospect over long years of labour it now seems to me doubtful whether a step forward could have been taken, if help from an unexpected quarter had not been forthcoming: namely from Aristotle, the ancient master of ethical research. Among all the new views which the present stage of the problem has yielded to me, scarcely one has astonished and at the same time convinced me more than this, that the ethics of the ancients was a highly developed concrete ethics of values, not in concept or conscious intention, but certainly in fact and in actual procedure. For it does not depend on whether correct terminology is used but whether, and how, goods and virtues in their manifold gradations have been grasped and characterized. Upon closer inspection the Nichomachean Ethics is discovered to be a rich mine of suggestion. It shows a mastery in the description of values which is evidently the result and the culmination of a whole development of careful method.
That a new systematic examination entails a new understanding of an historical treasure is a well-known fact. That Scheler’s idea could, without in the least aiming at it, throw new light upon Aristotle is a surprising test of the concrete ethics of values. But that the naively developed point of view should win for us indications and perspectives from the seemingly exhausted work of Aristotle by enabling us to understand and appreciate it better than before proves most clearly that we are here dealing with an unexpectedly profound interpenetration of old and new achievements, and that at the turning-point in ethics at which we now stand we are experiencing an historical synthesis of greater range than that of Kant and Nietzsche: a synthesis of ancient and modern ethics.
As yet, however, this exists only in idea. To carry it out is the task of our age. Whoever grasps the idea is called to the task. But the work of one individual can be only a beginning.
NICOLAI HARTMANN
MARBURG
September 1925