The highest stage of development which Na?ve Realism attains4 in the sphere of morality is that at which the moral law (the moral idea) is conceived as having no connection with any external being, but, hypothetically, as being an absolute power in one’s own consciousness. What man first listened to as the voice of God, to that he now listens as an independent power in his own mind which he calls conscience. This conception, however, takes us already beyond the level of the na?ve consciousness into the sphere where moral laws are treated as independent norms. They are there no longer made dependent on a human mind, but are turned into self-existent metaphysical entities5. They are analogous6 to the visible-invisible forces of Metaphysical Realism. Hence also they appear always as a corollary of Metaphysical Realism, which seeks reality, not in the part which human nature, through its thinking, plays in making reality what it [180]is, but which hypothetically posits7 reality over and above the facts of experience. Hence these extra-human moral norms always appear as corollaries of Metaphysical Realism. For this theory is bound to look for the origin of morality likewise in the sphere of extra-human reality. There are different possible views of its origin. If the thing-in-itself is unthinking and acts according to purely8 mechanical laws, as modern Materialism9 conceives that it does, then it must also produce out of itself, by purely mechanical necessity, the human individual and all that belongs to him. On that view the consciousness of freedom can be nothing more than an illusion. For whilst I consider myself the author of my action, it is the matter of which I am composed and the movements which are going on in it that determine me. I imagine myself free, but actually all my actions are nothing but the effects of the metabolism10 which is the basis of my physical and mental organisation11. It is only because we do not know the motives12 which compel us that we have the feeling of freedom. “We must emphasise13 that the feeling of freedom depends on the absence of external compelling motives.” “Our actions are as much subject to necessity as our thoughts” (Ziehen, Leitfaden der Physiologischen Psychologie, pp. 207, ff.).1 [181]
Another possibility is that some one will find in a spiritual being the Absolute lying behind all phenomena14. If so, he will look for the spring of action in some kind of spiritual power. He will regard the moral principles which his reason contains as the manifestation15 of this spiritual being, which pursues in men its own special purposes. Moral laws appear to the Dualist, who holds this view, as dictated by the Absolute, and man’s only task is to discover, by means of his reason, the decisions of the Absolute and to carry them out. For the Dualist, the moral order of the world is the visible symbol of the higher order that lies behind it. Our human morality is a revelation of the divine world-order. It is not man who matters in this moral order but reality in itself, that is, God. Man ought to do what God wills. Eduard von Hartmann, who identifies reality, as such, with God, and who treats God’s existence as a life of suffering, believes that the Divine Being has created the world in order to gain, by means of the world, release from his infinite suffering. Hence this philosopher regards the moral evolution of humanity as a process, the function of which is the redemption of God. “Only through the building up of a moral world-order on the part of rational, self-conscious individuals is it possible for the world-process to approximate to its goal.” “Real existence is the incarnation of God. The world-process is the passion of God who has become flesh, and at [182]the same time the way of redemption for Him who was crucified in the flesh; and morality is our co-operation in the shortening of this process of suffering and redemption” (Hartmann, Ph?nomenologie des sittlichen Bewusstseins, § 871). On this view, man does not act because he wills, but he must act because it is God’s will to be redeemed16. Whereas the Materialistic18 Dualist turns man into an automaton19, the action of which is nothing but the effect of causality according to purely mechanical laws, the Spiritualistic Dualist (i.e., he who treats the Absolute, the thing-in-itself, as a spiritual something in which man with his conscious experience has no share), makes man the slave of the will of the Absolute. Neither Materialism, nor Spiritualism, nor in general Metaphysical Realism which infers, as true reality, an extra-human something which it does not experience, have any room for freedom.
Na?ve and Metaphysical Realism, if they are to be consistent, have to deny freedom for one and the same reason, viz., because, for them, man does nothing but carry out, or execute, principles necessarily imposed upon him. Na?ve Realism destroys freedom by subjecting man to authority, whether it be that of a perceptible being, or that of a being conceived on the analogy of perceptible beings, or, lastly, that of the abstract voice of conscience. The Metaphysician, content merely to infer an extra-human reality, is unable to [183]acknowledge freedom because, for him, man is determined21, mechanically or morally, by a “thing-in-itself.”
Monism will have to admit the partial justification22 of Na?ve Realism, with which it agrees in admitting the part played by the world of percepts. He who is incapable23 of producing moral ideas through intuition must receive them from others. In so far as a man receives his moral principles from without he is actually unfree. But Monism ascribes to the idea the same importance as to the percept. The idea can manifest itself only in human individuals. In so far as man obeys the impulses coming from this side he is free. But Monism denies all justification to Metaphysics, and consequently also to the impulses of action which are derived24 from so-called “things-in-themselves.” According to the Monistic view, man’s action is unfree when he obeys some perceptible external compulsion; it is free when he obeys none but himself. There is no room in Monism for any kind of unconscious compulsion hidden behind percept and concept. If anybody maintains of the action of a fellow-man that it has not been freely done, he is bound to produce within the visible world the thing or the person or the institution which has caused the agent to act. And if he supports his contention25 by an appeal to causes of action lying outside the real world of our percepts and thoughts, then Monism must decline to take account of such an assertion. [184]
According to the Monistic theory, then, man’s action is partly free, partly unfree. He is conscious of himself as unfree in the world of percepts, and he realises in himself the spirit which is free.
The moral laws which his inferences compel the Metaphysician to regard as issuing from a higher power have, according to the upholder of Monism, been conceived by men themselves. To him the moral order is neither a mere20 image of a purely mechanical order of nature nor of the divine government of the world, but through and through the free creation of men. It is not man’s business to realise God’s will in the world, but his own. He carries out his own decisions and intentions, not those of another being. Monism does not find behind human agents a ruler of the world, determining them to act according to his will. Men pursue only their own human ends. Moreover, each individual pursues his own private ends. For the world of ideas realises itself, not in a community, but only in individual men. What appears as the common goal of a community is nothing but the result of the separate volitions of its individual members, and most commonly of a few outstanding men whom the rest follow as their leaders. Each one of us has it in him to be a free spirit, just as every rosebud26 is potentially a rose.
Monism, then, is in the sphere of genuinely moral action the true philosophy of freedom. [185]Being also a philosophy of reality, it rejects the metaphysical (unreal) restriction27 of the free spirit as emphatically as it acknowledges the physical and historical (na?vely real) restrictions28 of the na?ve man. Inasmuch as it does not look upon man as a finished product, exhibiting in every moment of his life his full nature, it considers idle the dispute whether man, as such, is free or not. It looks upon man as a developing being, and asks whether, in the course of this development, he can reach the stage of the free spirit.
Monism knows that Nature does not send forth29 man ready-made as a free spirit, but that she leads him up to a certain stage, from which he continues to develop still as an unfree being, until he reaches the point where he finds his own self.
Monism perceives clearly that a being acting30 under physical or moral compulsion cannot be truly moral. It regards the stages of automatic action (in accordance with natural impulses and instincts), and of obedient action (in accordance with moral norms), as a necessary prop31?deutic for morality, but it understands that it is possible for the free spirit to transcend32 both these transitory stages. Monism emancipates33 man in general from all the self-imposed fetters34 of the maxims35 of na?ve morality, and from all the externally imposed maxims of speculative36 Metaphysicians. The former Monism can as little eliminate from the world as it can eliminate percepts. The latter it [186]rejects, because it looks for all principles of explanation of the phenomena of the world within that world and not outside it. Just as Monism refuses even to entertain the thought of cognitive37 principles other than those applicable to men (p. 125), so it rejects also the concept of moral maxims other than those originated by men. Human morality, like human knowledge, is conditioned by human nature, and just as beings of a higher order would probably mean by knowledge something very different from what we mean by it, so we may assume that other beings would have a very different morality. For Monists, morality is a specifically human quality, and freedom the human way being moral.
[Contents]
1. Addition to the Revised Edition (1918).
In forming a judgment38 about the argument of the two preceding chapters, a difficulty may arise from what may appear to be a contradiction. On the one side, we have spoken of the experience of thinking as one the significance of which is universal and equally valid39 for every human consciousness. On the other side, we have pointed40 out that the ideas which we realise in moral action and which are homogeneous with those that thinking elaborates, manifest themselves in every human consciousness in a uniquely individual way. If we cannot get beyond regarding this antithesis41 as a “contradiction,” and if we do not recognise [187]that in the living intuition of this actually existing antithesis a piece of man’s essential nature reveals itself, we shall not be able to apprehend in the true light either what knowledge is or what freedom is. Those who think of concepts as nothing more than abstractions from the world of percepts, and who do not acknowledge the part which intuition plays, cannot but regard as a “pure contradiction” the thought for which we have here claimed reality. But if we understand how ideas are experienced intuitively in their self-sustaining essence, we see clearly that, in knowledge, man lives and enters into the world of ideas as into something which is identical for all men. On the other hand, when man derives42 from that world the intuitions for his voluntary actions, he individualises a member of the world of ideas by that same activity which he practises as a universally human one in the spiritual and ideal process of cognition. The apparent contradiction between the universal character of cognitive ideas and the individual character of moral ideas becomes, when intuited in its reality, a living concept. It is a criterion of the essential nature of man that what we intuitively apprehend of his nature oscillates, like a living pendulum43, between knowledge which is universally valid, and individualised experience of this universal content. Those who fail to perceive the one oscillation in its real character, will regard thinking as a merely subjective44 human activity. For those who are [188]unable to grasp the other oscillation, man’s activity in thinking will seem to lose all individual life. Knowledge is to the former, the moral life to the latter, an unintelligible45 fact. Both will fall back on all sorts of ideas for the explanation of the one or of the other, because both either do not understand at all how thinking can be intuitively experienced, or, else, misunderstand it as an activity which merely abstracts.
[Contents]
2. Addition to the Revised Edition (1918).
On page 180 I have spoken of Materialism. I am well aware that there are thinkers, like the above-mentioned Th. Ziehen, who do not call themselves Materialists at all, but yet who must be called so from the point of view adopted in this book. It does not matter whether a thinker says that for him the world is not restricted to merely material being, and that, therefore, he is not a Materialist17. No, what matters is whether he develops concepts which are applicable only to material being. Anyone who says, “our action, like our thought, is necessarily determined,” lays down a concept which is applicable only to material processes, but not applicable either to what we do or to what we are. And if he were to think out what his concept implies, he would end by thinking materialistically46. He saves himself from this fate only by the same inconsistency which so often results from not thinking one’s thoughts [189]out to the end. It is often said nowadays that the Materialism of the nineteenth century is scientifically dead. But in truth it is not so. It is only that nowadays we frequently fail to notice that we have no other ideas than those which apply only to the material world. Thus recent Materialism is disguised, whereas in the second half of the nineteenth century it openly flaunted47 itself. Towards a theory which apprehends48 the world spiritually the camouflaged49 Materialism of the present is no less intolerant than the self-confessed Materialism of the last century. But it deceives many who think they have a right to reject a theory of the world in terms of Spirit, on the ground that the scientific world-view “has long ago abandoned Materialism.” [190]
1 For the manner in which I have here spoken of “Materialism,” and for the justification of so speaking of it, see the Addition at the end of this chapter. ↑
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1
apprehend
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| vt.理解，领悟，逮捕，拘捕，忧虑 | |
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dictated
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| v.大声讲或读( dictate的过去式和过去分词 )；口授；支配；摆布 | |
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enumerated
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| v.列举，枚举，数( enumerate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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attains
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| （通常经过努力）实现( attain的第三人称单数 )； 达到； 获得； 达到（某年龄、水平、状况） | |
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entities
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| 实体对像； 实体，独立存在体，实际存在物( entity的名词复数 ) | |
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analogous
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| adj.相似的；类似的 | |
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posits
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| v.假定，设想，假设( posit的第三人称单数 ) | |
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purely
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| adv.纯粹地，完全地 | |
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materialism
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| n.［哲］唯物主义，唯物论；物质至上 | |
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metabolism
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| n.新陈代谢 | |
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organisation
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| n.组织，安排，团体，有机休 | |
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motives
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| n.动机，目的( motive的名词复数 ) | |
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emphasise
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| vt.加强...的语气，强调，着重 | |
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phenomena
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| n.现象 | |
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manifestation
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| n.表现形式；表明；现象 | |
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redeemed
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| adj. 可赎回的，可救赎的 动词redeem的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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materialist
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| n. 唯物主义者 | |
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materialistic
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| a.唯物主义的，物质享乐主义的 | |
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automaton
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| n.自动机器，机器人 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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justification
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| n.正当的理由；辩解的理由 | |
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incapable
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| adj.无能力的，不能做某事的 | |
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derived
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| vi.起源；由来；衍生；导出v.得到( derive的过去式和过去分词 )；（从…中）得到获得；源于；（从…中）提取 | |
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contention
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| n.争论，争辩，论战；论点，主张 | |
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rosebud
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| n.蔷薇花蕾，妙龄少女 | |
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restriction
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| n.限制，约束 | |
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restrictions
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| 约束( restriction的名词复数 )； 管制； 制约因素； 带限制性的条件（或规则） | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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acting
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| n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的 | |
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prop
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| vt.支撑；n.支柱，支撑物；支持者，靠山 | |
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transcend
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| vt.超出，超越(理性等)的范围 | |
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emancipates
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| vt.解放（emancipate的第三人称单数形式） | |
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fetters
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| n.脚镣( fetter的名词复数 )；束缚v.给…上脚镣，束缚( fetter的第三人称单数 ) | |
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maxims
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| n.格言，座右铭( maxim的名词复数 ) | |
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speculative
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| adj.思索性的，暝想性的，推理的 | |
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cognitive
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| adj.认知的，认识的，有感知的 | |
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judgment
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| n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见 | |
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valid
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| adj.有确实根据的；有效的；正当的，合法的 | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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antithesis
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| n.对立；相对 | |
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42
derives
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| v.得到( derive的第三人称单数 )；（从…中）得到获得；源于；（从…中）提取 | |
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pendulum
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| n.摆，钟摆 | |
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subjective
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| a.主观(上)的，个人的 | |
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unintelligible
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| adj.无法了解的，难解的，莫明其妙的 | |
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46
materialistically
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47
flaunted
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| v.炫耀，夸耀( flaunt的过去式和过去分词 )；有什么能耐就施展出来 | |
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apprehends
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| 逮捕，拘押( apprehend的第三人称单数 )； 理解 | |
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49
camouflaged
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| v.隐蔽( camouflage的过去式和过去分词 )；掩盖；伪装，掩饰 | |
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