Page:Philosophical Review Volume 9.djvu/237

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
221
SUMMARIES OF ARTICLES.
[Vol. IX.

those which would be helpful, and is thus seen to be sympathy. This, then, is an original human possession, and is that from which morality evolves. Negative commands will at first be most prominent, as most necessary to the conservation of society, although very soon positive commands will be made in order to the advancement of society. Self-realization is never the end, though egoistic impulses are not wrong until they cause injury to others. When consciousness develops, motives as well as actions are judged, and thus morality becomes internal. So there may be a discrepancy between conduct and motives. All moral imperatives seek a certain end, the welfare of others. This we cannot explain; it is the bed-rock of ethics. This end never changes, though the laws, as means to this end, necessarily change as knowledge grows and conditions differ. For ethical precepts are based on natural laws which are empirical judgments. The end being social welfare, experience may very well teach men how to realize that end. The sympathetic impulses, moreover, work in constantly expanding fields. This sympathy cannot be derived from egoism, a process which would be truly miraculous, but is original and underived, and contains in itself the whole of morality. This makes possible an explanation of self-sacrifice in the interests of others, and also shows that virtues are but the means which have been found to be productive of good results, which, however, we should dispense with if at any time they should cause injury. We should preserve only that which is conducive to the general happiness.

A. W. Crawford.

HISTORICAL.

The Relation between Human Consciousness and its Ideal as Conceived by Kant and Fichte. Ellen Bliss Talbot. Kant Stud., pp. 286-310.

The Kr. d. r. V. distinguishes sharply between the formal and material aspects of consciousness. The matter, given from without, is wholly lacking in form, and the unifying activity of thought, even in its highest phase as transcendental apperception, is devoid of content. Although Kant might not say that the two elements could exist apart, he certainly regards their union as mechanical, rather than organic. In conceiving of human thought thus, he makes it different in kind from his ideal of cognition, intellektuelle Anschauung. His doctrine of intellektuelle Anschauung has two forms; the lower seems to have been reached by starting with the material aspect of thought and forming a concept of a matter which contains its own principle of unity; the higher, by starting with the 'I think' and conceiving of a self-consciousness which is its own content. The second conception is worthy to serve as the ideal of knowledge; but Kant's doctrine is defective in that it regards this ideal as one to which we cannot even approximate. It is only a problematic concept, and our cognition, at least as far as we can ever know, is wholly different from it in kind. This difficulty is not overcome in the later Critiques. Kant seems, indeed, to ad-