-2-

Practical Ethics Series

The History of Ethics: Kant to Nietzsche

Terry L Anderson

Sep 15, 2001

Primary Sources (Listed in order of extent of contribution):

·  Bertrand Russell. A History of Western Philosophy. 1945. Simon & Schuster.

·  Alasdair MacIntyre. A Short History of E thics: A History of Moral Philosophy from the Homeric Age to the Twentieth Century. 1998. Univ of Notre Dame Press.

·  Peter Singer, editor. A Companion to Ethics. 1993 Blackwell Publishers.

Introduction

We look at moral philosophy in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Modern philosophy derives from two main roots: Descarte (the rationalist) and Locke (the empiricist). We will see growing from the Cartesian tradition, the German Idealists (Kant and Hegel). From Locke grows, Hume, the Romantics (Rousseau, Schopenhauer, and Kierkegaard and Nietzsche- though some of them would not have considered themselves romantics) and the Utilitarians (Bertham and the two Mills).

Locke (British 1632-1704) is the father of Empiricism (all knowledge derives from experience). Hume (British, 1711-1776) takes empiricism to its extreme and shows its faults. Kant (German, 1724-1804) and Hegel (German, 1770-1831), though later than Hume, do not appreciate the weaknesses shown by Hume (the British and German schools of philosophy did not interact closely) and continue to develop empiricist ideas (from a Cartesian root) that can largely be refuted by Hume’s arguments.

Romanticism takes Locke into a different direction, in part to avoid the weaknesses shown by Hume. Rousseau (1712-1778) is the father of this movement (which is used by the Revolutionists as the basis of the French Revolution). This develops through Schopenhauer (1788-1860). Kierkegaard (Danish, 1813-1855) builds on Kant but takes him in a different direction than Hegel adding romanticism. The extreme of this tradition continues to Nietzsche (German, 1844-1900) (although he would not have considered himself a romantic and often disagreed widely with them).

In parallel with Romanticism, developed British Utilitarianism: Bentham (1748-1832) and James Mill (1773-1836) and his son John Stuart Mill (1806-1836). We have already examined utilitarianism.

The German School: Kant & Hegel plus Kierkegaard

Kant believed that morality could be established objectively, rationally, simply by self-consistency (ala Descarte’s proof of existence). All moral concepts have their seat and origin wholly a priori in the reason. Moral worth exists only when a man acts from a sense of duty.

Hegel extended Kant but accepts limitations of rationality. He believes that in isolation morality has no basis, but that morality derives from the needs of society (morality is the norms of a rational society). This position on morality arises partly from Hegel’s view that reality can be deduced from the sole consideration that it cannot be contradictory. Hegel views knowledge as progressing through three stages:

  1. sense perception – awareness of object
  2. skeptical criticism of senses – becomes purely subjective
  3. self-knowledge where subject and object are no longer distinct

(Marx would take Hegel’s philosophy and build his Marxism on it).

Kierkegaard disagrees with Kant and Hegel. True morality cannot be derived rationally (all deductive reasoning depends on arbitrary postulates which come from personal choices) but ultimately derives from an individual’s personal choice. Individual choice (the peculiar) rises above the norm of society (the universal). Objective reflection has limitations and is inappropriate for the realm of subjectivity (which to Kierkegaard include ethics and religion). This position nears subjectivism.

Romanticism

Romanticism (philosophically) substitutes the aesthetic for the utilitarian and thus is the opposite track from Bentham and the Mills. Kierkegaard takes Kant toward romanticism. Schopenhauer builds on Rousseau but also Kant, but in a different direction than Hegel, taking Kant’s thing-in-itself and identifying it with the will. The will is behind all phenomena and more fundamental than space and time, but the will is only a part of the will of the universe and an individual’s separateness is an illusion. This could have lead Schopenhauer to identify his cosmic will with God and on to pantheism but Schopenhauer is a pessimist. He identifies the cosmic will as evil and the source of all suffering in the world. Suffering is essential to life and is increased by every increase in knowledge. He finds his solution in Hinduism and Buddhism. The cause of suffering is will and the less we exercise the will the less we will suffer.

Nietzsche saw himself as the successor to Schopenhauer. Nietzsche also will ethical but also metaphysical primacy. This leads him to aristocratic anarchism and an affinity to Byron, but also to Machiavelli, but he is a complete opposite of Kant. He admires certain qualities which he believes are only possible for an aristocratic minority; the majority in his opinion should be only a means to the excellence of the few and should not be regarded as having any independent claim to happiness or well-being. While this sounds like nazism, he was no lover of the state but a passionate individualist and in fact condemns racism (he thought Poles much superior to Germans). Particular targets were women (in Thus Spake Zarathustra he says women are not, as yet, capable of friendship; they are still cats or birds or at best cows. “Man shall be trained for war and women for the recreation of the warrior. All else if folly.”) and Christianity which he objects to as promoting “slave morality.” Christianity aims at taming the heart in man but this is a mistake.

Utilitarians

We have already examined utilitarianism (doing the most good for the most individuals), but in a future sessions we will explore the social contract models from Hobbes through Locke, Rosseau, Kant, and culminating in Rawl’s ethics of justice.

We see that ethics and philosophy diverged in the nineteenth century with most schools moving in directions incompatible with Christianity, Kierkegaard being an isolated exception. But while Kierkegaard has had a great influence in the twentieth century in theological circles he has had little impact in philosophy. The utilitarians develop into the most compatible philosophical movement and I personally find a lot to admire in Rawl’s ethics.