IN our answer to the question, Why should I be moral? we found that, explicitly or by implication, all Ethics presupposed something which is the good, and that this good (whatever else may be its nature) has always the character of an end. The moral good is an end in itself, is to be pursued for its own sake. It must not be made a means to something not itself. We have now seen further that pleasure is not the good, is not the end; that, in pursuing pleasure as such, we do not pursue the good. Hedonism we have dismissed, and may banish it, if we please, from our sight, while we turn to develope a new view of the good, another answer to the question, What is the end? In Hedonism we have criticized a onesided view; we shall have to do here with an opposite extremity of onesidedness. The self to be realized before was the self or selves as a maximum quantity or number of particular feelings: in the theory which awaits us the self to be realized has a defect which is diametrically opposed to the first, and yet is the same defect. Its fault is the opposite, since for mere particular it substitutes mere universal; we have not to do with feelings, as this and that, but with a form which is thought of as not this or that. Its fault is the same fault, the failing to see things as a whole, and the fixing as real one element which yet is unreal when apart from the other. In a word, we find in both a onesided view, and their common vice may be called abstractness. So much by way of anticipation, and now we must betake ourselves to our task.
[1] What is the moral end? We know already in part what it is
- ↑ What follows, the reader must be warned, is very far from being meant to be a statement of Kant’s main ethical view; as such it would be neither complete nor accurate, though it will be found to be an applicable criticism. We could not give a statement of Kant’s view without giving all the sides of it; and, were we prepared to do that, not only would considerable space be required, but also we should be obliged to consider topics which lie outside our present undertaking. We have stated a view for purposes of criticism, but that criticism is at the same time a criticism that holds against more than our statement.
