(a) THE PROPOSITION OF SOCRATES
BUT how then is the practical and normative character of ethics to be understood? And how is it to be defined? Ethics cannot assume the defence of commandments. It cannot be positive legislation. What competence has it then of a practical kind?
The same problem was involved in the initial question of ancient ethics: Can virtue be taught ? The ancients decided it almost without exception in the affirmative. Their fundamental thought was intellectualistic. It is best known in its Socratic form. No one does evil for evil’s sake; a good which he is striving for always hovers before him. He can be mistaken only in what he holds to be good. It all depends on whether he knows what is good. If that is known to him, he cannot will the bad; thereby he would contradict himself. Hence the two fundamental propositions which rule the whole later ethics of antiquity are: Virtue is knowledge; and therefore, Virtue can be taught.
Even the Stoic doctrine of the emotions did not contradict this teaching. It is indeed the feelings which prevent the will from willing the good; they must on that account be destroyed. But feelings themselves are regarded from the intellectualist point of view—that is, as inadequate knowledge (α″λóγos ópμη⌢). The overcoming of them is none other than a knowing, the dominance of the logos.
Herein lies the extreme normative conception of ethics; not only is ethics competent to teach what ought to happen, but it also has the ability to determine volition and action. The morally bad man is the ignorant man, the good man is he that is wise. The ideal of the wise man dominates ethics.
(b) THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION OF “SIN”
Christian ethics subverts this doctrine by its concept of human weakness and the power of evil.
Man knows the commandment of God, but he nevertheless transgresses it. He has not the power to fulfil it, his knowledge is impotent, he “sins.” One may describe the concept of sin as the specially revolutionizing factor in Christian ethics. Sin is neither a mere mistake nor simply guilt. It is a determining, seductive power in life. Certainly upon man falls the consequence—the wages of sin—but he is not its master. He must give way to it. The ancient Greek is indeed also aware of being overcome; but he is overcome by feeling, and the feeling is his ignorance. But the Christian is convinced from the first that it does not rest with him. For it is not a question of knowledge. It is a question as to the ability or inability to follow the better knowledge. For man does not necessarily follow it. Much more, once he knows the law, he still has to decide for or against it. There is a dark irrational power which takes part in this decision. It is the stronger power. Man has not the strength to wrench himself free from it. The flesh is weak. God alone can help and can deliver from the evil power.
It is a matter of indifference how one metaphysically interprets the power of evil, whether as devil or as matter, as an anti-moral impulse or as radical evil. The fact is always the same; and it contains, just as does the proposition of Socrates, a fragment of truth which is not to be lost. It is the antithesis of the doctrine of Socrates. Translated into the language of the ancients it reads: Virtue cannot be taught; for only knowledge can indeed be taught, but knowledge does not avail. In the language of our present-day concepts it is: Ethics can indeed teach us what we ought to do, but the teaching is powerless, man cannot follow it. Ethics is certainly normative in idea, but not in reality. It does not determine and guide man in life, it is not practical. There is no practical philosophy. Religion alone is practical.
The latter statements express a view which, once more, shoots far beyond the mark. Although the overcoming of human weakness and of the power of evil may be a question by itself, which is outside the question whether virtue can be taught, we nevertheless must know the moral commandments beforehand; we must in some form know what is good, and what is evil, in order to be confronted by a decision. Although virtue “is” not knowledge, a knowing must belong to it. And in so far as man does not possess this knowledge, the task of ethics is to give it to him. It must confront him with the decision for or against what is presented. It would have to point out the moral commandments to him.
This presentation of the problem is not changed when we interpret it in the conceptual language of religion. Here the law given of God plays the rôe of the norms. The law abides, even in the work of redemption: “I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.” As the first condition, man must be confronted with the law. His failure is failure before it. But the representation of God, as law-giver, is not a disavowal of ethics as man’s recognition of the norm, but is the strongest acknowledgment of the absoluteness of its content. The authority of the law-giver is the form of this absoluteness. Here the autonomy of the moral consciousness is transferred to God. Whether this transference corresponds to the phenomenon, whether man does not thereby deprive himself of his birthright, is not the question here. It belongs indeed in its essence to the concept of sin. Sin is not guilt before men or before one’s own conscience, but guilt before God. In this sense sin is no longer an ethical concept and has no connection with the question before us.
(c) SCHOPENHAUER’S PURELY THEORETICAL ETHICS
With both these conceptions, the ancient and the Christian, we can link up a longer series of further gradations of the normative. But for our problem only the extreme case is of importance—the complete disappearance of the normative. Schopenhauer was the best representative of an ethics of this kind.
According to his view, ethics as a philosophical discipline is entirely unpractical to exactly the same extent as are logic and metaphysics. Not only can it prescribe nothing, it cannot even treat of precepts. There is no power, whether in man or outside of him, which could hold up an Ought against him. Truly, there is a principle of moral conduct which is deeply anchored in the metaphysical nature of man. But ethics can only lay it bare, draw it into the light of consciousness, so far as it is already active in him. It cannot incite the principle to activity where it slumbers buried and choked with earth. Ethics is not an energizing factor in real life, it can only behold, analyse, comprehend in a contemplative way, like all philosophy. It is pure theory.
The life of man goes on its way untroubled about it. How man determines his course depends upon his “intelligible character”; his character is the moral decision. But it never enters into the world of appearance, not even in ethical theory. Ethics accordingly not only cannot invent what ought to be but cannot even discover and teach it. What ought to happen is always there; indeed, the decision for or against is already made. The primal deed of choice does not lie in consciousness at all, but precedes it.
If one compares this interpretation of ethics with the two views stated above, one may discriminate a threefold gradation.
(1) The ancient view: Ethics is normative; it teaches what ought to happen, and indeed successfully. It has influence upon life, its teaching sustains man’s responsibility.
(2) The Christian view: Ethics is indeed normative in the sense of a doctrine, but not in the sense of efficacy or of influence. Doctrine alone is without effect. Strength and help must come from another quarter.
(3) Schopenhauer’s view: Ethics is not at all normative; it can neither determine life nor throw any light on how it should be determined. It is without influence for good or evil.
It is easy to perceive that the two extreme theories are furthest removed from the ethical phenomenon. In the ancient conception we have seen the source of the error. In the Christian, the error is removed. Schopenhauer’s view suffers from the opposite embarrassment: How could the consciousness of the principle be a matter of complete indifference for the attitude towards life, since all consciousness has practically an emotional undertone, and since pure theory exists only in abstraction? And how can ethics as a doctrine be wholly unpractical, since it is a knowledge of the principle, and this knowledge is the presupposition of volitional decision? For, although moral conduct “is” indeed not knowledge, it presupposes knowledge.
The intermediate view comes closest to the phenomenon of the moral life. It limits the normative in ethics without discarding it on principle. That it in fact limits it too much is matter for further investigation.
(d) PLATO’S “MENO” AND THE SOLUTION OF THE DIFFICULTY
But we have not yet closed the controversial question of the ancients concerning the possibility of teaching virtue. The erroneous presupposition in it was that knowledge, as such, guarantees right conduct. If we set this aside, if we correct it, knowledge still retains the basic significance of a prior condition. But if we fall back upon this more modest proposition, the old question returns with clearer outlines.
It now exclusively concerns this knowledge which first brings man face to face with decision, and in this sense is the condition of right conduct. If we for a time disregard the further question whether and how far man is free to apply such knowledge, the problem still remains: What sort of knowledge is this? Is it, as such, capable of being taught or not? Can ethics communicate its contents—the moral commandments? Or is it powerless here also? Is it condemned merely to confirm afterwards and to analyse what the living moral consciousness already possesses?
It is in fact this problem which Plato takes up and treats in the Meno. Herein he has opened up the way for philosophical ethics.
The perplexity arises from the alternative: Virtue is either something that can be taught (διδακτóv), something that by practice can be acquired (άσκητóv), or it is something that is inborn in man by nature (øúσει παραγεvóμεvov). This either-or is to be understood as a strict disjunction. If virtue can be taught, its contents cannot be an original possession of the moral consciousness (the soul). They must be received from without, and be capable of being acquired by study. But then it is an affair of legislation (θέσει), a thing humanly devised, and has no absoluteness, no universal obligatoriness. The sophistical relativity of knowledge holds then for moral perception also. And the dependence of right conduct upon knowledge signifies the abandonment of the fixed invariable standard of good and evil.
And conversely: If virtue is inborn by nature, it is indeed an invariable standard of value, a possession raised above all affirmation and all arbitrariness of thought, a possession originating in the soul, the basis of moral perception; but it cannot be taught. No one can communicate it to the soul: the soul can only create it out of itself. But for ethics that means banishment into theory, into the unpractical, the contemplative.
Here we have in a nutshell the fundamental predicament of the normative. Both sides of the alternative are equally unacceptable, both are in conflict with the situation found in ethical phenomena. And now begins the famous dialectical investigation which proves the alternative itself to be false.
If in ethical “knowledge” the διδακτóv and the øεσει παραγεóμεvov exclude each other, they must exclude each other also in every other kind of knowledge. Is this the case ? Mathematics is accounted a subject-matter for teaching; one ought therefore to conclude that mathematical propositions are not objects of innate knowledge. One must examine the phenomenon of teaching and learning. Plato elaborates this phenomenon fully in the cross-examination of the slave.1 The slave is placed before the figure of a square and is questioned concerning the side of a square double the size. It is shown that at first he gives false answers, but that then he sees his error from the nature of the thing itself (the geometrical figure). Finally from the same nature of the thing he perceives in the diagonal of the given square the side of the one which is sought. He knows it suddenly, without its having been told him. The cross-examination had only directed his attention to it. Evidently, therefore, he had the knowledge in himself as an original possession. His “learning” is only a becoming conscious of the factual contents in him. The “teaching” by the one who knows is only the directing of attention to the matter in hand. The pupil must see it himself, he must be convinced by it himself, otherwise there is no real insight. “Teaching” is merely the midwifery of cognition.
Herewith the situation is fundamentally reversed. In geometry at least the διδακóv and the παραγεóμεvov do not exclude each other. Here the alternative itself is false. Conversely: Only what is already present in the soul as innate knowledge can be learned. “Learning” is the apprehension of inborn knowledge, the “anamnesis.” The epistemological significance of anamnesis has no connection with the mythopsychological notion of “recollection”; it is determined by its definition: “To recover of oneself knowledge from within oneself.”2 This “recovery” points to the depth of the soul into which he must reach, who, already knowing, wishes to assure himself of the truth. In Plato the expression appears to have a certain fixity of meaning, as a parallel passage in the Phædo shows, where the nature of learning is defined as a “recovery of inborn knowledge.”3
“Anamnesis” is the Platonic concept of the aprioristic in knowledge. Geometrical knowledge is aprioristic. That does not prevent its being “teachable.” Teaching is the leading of another to make his own descent into the depth. Might it not be the same with ethical knowledge?
Manifestly the morally good man knows in some form or other what the good is. From what source can he know it? He cannot fall back upon any authority, he cannot swear by the word of any master; just as little has he from birth a clear consciousness of the good. It is otherwise if he carries the knowledge of the good hidden in himself, in the depth of the soul, as inborn knowledge and can draw it up into the light of consciousness through his own reflection and penetration, and on occasion through the midwifery of one who knows, who teaches, in that he incites to reflection. In this sense then virtue can be taught, just as geometry can. Its teachability does not contradict its inner origin, the øúαει παγεvóμεvov. This is only a vague expression for the apriority of moral knowledge contained in the essential nature of virtue. It can be taught only because and in so far as it is an aprioristic insight.
1Meno, 82b–86e.
2Ibid., 85d: άvαλαμβάvειv αúτóv έv αúτΨ έπστη′μηv.
3Phædo, 75e: άè o˜γ δ καλο˜μεv μαvθάvειv δικεαv έπιστη′μηv άvαλαμβάvειv α″v ει″v