because a collection of men, however free we suppose it to be, must nevertheless govern ACTIVITY IN GENERAL 133 itself according to some laws, and these laws are the State. Then, the ideal State, being the best government of men for their perfection- ment, both material and spiritual, accomplishes the work of the Church itself, which is neither above, nor below, nor beside the State, because it is the State. Thus in like manner, no one can grant or abolish freedom of thought, since thought is by definition freedom, and the restraint is thought itself, because liberty coincides with necessity. And finally State instruction cannot but correspond with rational demands, and the free instruction of citizens, if it be really so and not arbitrary and capricious, will be the same as that of the State, or will be changed into the instruction of the State.
Passing to other orders of fact that are less other political, but are also argument for practical discussions, we shall refer to the so-called con flicts between duty or interest, as symbolized in the legendary Titus Manlius, when offered the alternative aut reipublicae aut sui suorumque obliviscendi; — or to the so-called question of the two moralities, private and public, in support of which the not legendary Camillo Cavour said in 1860, that if he had done in his private interest what he had done for Italy, he would i34 PHILOSOPHY OF PRACTICAL PT.
have deserved the galleys; — or we can refer to questions of classification, and ask whether the kind of man who is socially harmless should be placed side by side with the criminal; — or to those others, famous in Casuistic, relating to capital punishment, homicide, suicide, lies, whether and when they should be permitted, and other similar questions. Here, too, the philosopher will smilingly observe that duties and interests can never be in conflict, because in every given case duty is always one only, and interest is always one only, that of the given case; — he will deny that there is one public and one private morality, because in man, the private person and the citizen, family relations, or those of friendship, and those of political life, are inseparable and indistinguishable; — that every man is bad and good, inoffensive and criminal, and that in the so-called criminal there must also be the non-criminal, if he be given the name of man; — that every punish ment is a punishment of death, that is, it causes something to die, and that it is impossible to find a clear distinction between shutting a man up in prison and thus taking from him a more or less large slice of physical life, and taking it from him altogether by hanging or shooting ACTIVITY IN GENERAL 135 him; — that homicide, as such, is so little a crime that in war it is a duty to commit it; — that a lie, which is silence as to what one knows, is in itself so innocent that no one in the world, save a foolish prater, tells all he knows, and that if it be admitted that one can and should be silent, that is to say, let others be deceived by our silence (though this is eloquent), there is no reason for not admitting that we can also betray them with speech (often less eloquent), as is done with children in order to send them to bed, and with sick persons in order to comfort them; — that, finally, culpable suicide is not the material act of depriving oneself of physical life (a thing done without incurring blame, and indeed with praise and glory, by those who sacrifice themselves for others in war, in epidemics, in dangers of all sorts, and by every one who consumes his own vital strength in a worthy cause), but the killing of the moral life in oneself.
In all these answers to questions, we have Misunder standing on not made our imaginary philosopher commit the part of philosophers.
any blunder; we have indeed put into his mouth things that we believe to be all of them most true and irrefutable, because we believe them ourselves. And we hold that it is necessary 136 PHILOSOPHY OF PRACTICAL PT.
to profess them against those who arbitrarily make questions philosophical whose terms are not philosophical. But when the philosopher offers those solutions to the empirical disputants, he behaves like him who, hearing a speech in a language of which he knows little, makes a reply that is in itself most reasonable, but without relation to the previous speech. The empiricist, if he have studied philosophy, will be able to reply, as did King Theodore, worn with misery, in the old opdra bouffe of the Abbe Casti, to him who recalls to him the miseries suffered by Marius, Themistocles, and Darius:— Good my son, I know them well, For I have heard these tales before; But just at present, truth to tell, 'Tis money interests me more.
Historical Money, that is, ready money to spend in significance of the aforesaid definite situations historically given, in order to questions. J ° find one's way in them; for all those questions are without universal signification, but have arisen from political and individual problems, to which they do and must belong. Certainly they are insoluble in the abstract, and this is the defect, or rather the nature of empirical questions, which, if they admitted of rigorous ACTIVITY IN GENERAL 137 solution, would not be any longer empirical. Therefore it is a foolish thing to discuss them philosophically, as is seen in the conspicuous example of certain casuistical enquiries (the homicide of the unjust aggressor, the lie, incest, etc.) which have been treated by nearly all philo sophers and have been dragged about for centuries in discussions on Ethic, although every century has left them at the same point as they were in the one preceding.
But if it be not possible to solve, we can at least state them in abstract terms, in the same way as drill and the sham -fight are abstract, though certainly of use when the battle is really fought. We can and we should bear in mind these abstract solutions, in order that we may be the better able to solve a series of concrete cases, which are not identical, certainly, because identical cases do not exist, but more or less similar, and therefore require solutions that are more or less similar. — Can war be done away with? This question refers not to the elimination of the category "war," but to the possibility or the reverse of avoiding in the twentieth century and in European countries that empirical war which is waged with cannons and cruisers, that costs milliards 138 PHILOSOPHY OF PRACTICAL PT.
when it is not waged, and tens of milliards when it is waged, and out of which the conqueror comes conquered. It is well understood that some form of war will always continue, because war is inherent to life. — Can private property be done away with? This does not mean to ask if it be possible to prevent man from taking possession of things, of his food, or of the material that he requires for dress, or from inhabiting a house; but whether it be possible to alter, to the advantage of mankind, the proportion that now obtains between pro duction with private capital and production with collective capital, giving the preference to the latter.
And so on, for it would be tiresome to con tinue to state the historical problems that are grouped beneath each of the recorded formulae, which indeed are easily to be found. Thus when we absolutely forbid the telling of lies, as indecorous and degrading, as that which severs the ties of human community and of reciprocal faith, as the vice (said Herbart) that has the special faculty of stirring up against it all the five moral ideas — justice, benevolence, equity, perfection, and internal liberty — the intention is to forbid what is usually called lying; but it ACTIVITY IN GENERAL 139 is certainly not intended to institute a speculative enquiry as to the relation between knowing and making known, between the theoretic act of thought and the practical act of its communi cation to other individuals. Thus again, the prohibition of suicide has in view suicide through egoism, which is the most frequent form, and it is therefore useless to identify this with the universal relation between death and life, and with the proposition that life is preserved by means of death. Thus too, finally, the con ception of the delinquent has been a beneficent rectification of common prejudices relating to the efficacy of certain laws and penalties applied to certain classes of individuals who are led to crime as though through unrestrainable natural tendency. For the rest, the wisdom of life teaches us usually to take individuals as we find them, with their virtues and vices, and without claiming to set them violently right, and to remake them from top to bottom. We should rather adapt them in the best way possible for our own ends, or for those of society. This does not, however, imply that they are fixed beings, and that each of those classes is heterogeneous in respect of the others. If, with the help of a foolish positivist philosophy, we make of the PT.
2#. False deduction of the empirical from the philosophical.
Affirmations relating to the contingent changed into philosophemes.
140 PHILOSOPHY OF PRACTICAL idea of the delinquent something necessary, a natural being, as it is called, confounding natural istic with natural and incorrectly hypostasizing gnoseological procedure, then, and then alone, are we right in reacting and in denying.
And yet those solutions of philosophers, who think that they are solving empirical questions by annulling or ignoring them, do not yet represent the worst that happens when philosophy usurps the function of empiria. Such misunderstanding, such hardness of hearing, may be proof of a spirit so energetically directed to universals that it is unable to see anything else, and may even for that reason possess some sympathetic quality. The worst of the worst is the entering upon empirical questions, not in order to annul, but to take sides in them and to solve them philo sophically.
This cannot be done, save by supporting empirical concepts with rigorous and philo sophical concepts, confounding the one with the other by a trick of thought, and sometimes of words, making use of synonyms and homonyms, and pronouncing in the name of philosophy arbitrary solutions suggested only by caprice or self-interest. This is the complete corruption, alike of philosophy and of empiria. Not satisfied ACTIVITY IN GENERAL 141 with making practical classes follow philosophical concepts of the practical, it is then sought to deduce the former from the latter, and behold them now deriving virtues and duties from the universal concept of practical moral activity, by means of the divisions of internal and external, of part and whole, of individual and society. These are concepts of relations, not susceptible of division, and therefore incapable of serving as base for empirical divisions. Or they have recourse to the triad of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, which is the uni versal concrete itself, constituting unity, and therefore incapable of serving as basis for division. Or they will deduce the moral virtues according to the three faculties, as virtues of representation, feeling and thought, or according to the two of the will and the intellect, as dianoetic and ethical virtues; as though the base of the division of the practical could be that of theoretical and practical. Empirical concepts become in this way all false, whereas, in their real nature, they are neither false nor true.
There is no thesis, however absurd, which cannot be defended with such a method. All know that there are aristocratic and demo cratic philosophers, libertarian and authoritarian, i42 PHILOSOPHY OF PRACTICAL PT.
anarchical and organicist, socialistic and anti- socialistic, bellicose and pacific, feminist and antifeminist; and there are others who maintain the right to lie, the right to suicide, the right to prostitution, the right to incest, to making of themselves caterers for the scaffold, the right to the penalty of death. These solutions can be morally and politically justified in certain definite and particular cases. There are other solutions rationally unjustifiable in the individual case and put forward only through passion, wickedness, or prejudice, but in both hypotheses, they are outside philosophy and within it so false as to be odious, as that is odious which is main tained, not by means of intrinsic reason, but by imposition altogether extrinsic and external. Reason of the Such hatefulness explains the rebellion against against rules, moral rules and concepts that has often taken place. This, together with that against literary classes and rules and others of the same sort, forms part of the vast movement of rebellion against empirical or empiricized philosophy. In truth, when those rules and ideas are taken by themselves, no rebellion is possible, because they do not exert any pressure and obey the orders of the man who has made them. But it happens otherwise, when they become rigid and philo- ACTIVITY IN GENERAL 143 sophical, and as is said, absolute, claiming to substitute themselves as such for philosophy and to provide a base for judgments. In addition to this, from the enforced union of philoso- phemes with rules, has arisen the false idea of philosophizing about the practical (about an Ethic, for example), which showed itself to be practical, or, as is said, normative.
Philosophy, by taking part in empirical ques- Limits between . philosophy and tions, ruins both itself and them, because it loses the serenity, the dignity, and the utility that are intrinsic to it. In like manner, the empirical disciplines ruin themselves and philo sophy when they claim to philosophize with their classes, which are not categories, with their pseudo-concepts, which are not concepts, with their generalia, which are not universalia. Here too, safety lies in distinction: the observa tion of distinction alone makes possible beneficent co-operation.
IX HISTORICAL ANNOTATIONS A HISTORY of the general theories relating to the practical activity is still to write, although we have several relating to particular theories of Ethic. The mode in which such a historical narration should be conducted results from the historical explanations themselves, which we have exposed and shall continue to expose. Here we cannot even offer a rapid summary. We shall limit ourselves to making a few remarks on the subject, and we shall give some historical account of certain problems of the philosophy of the practical, that have had, to some extent, profound treatment, or have at least been suffi ciently discussed (for not a few others are virgin, or almost so), with the sole object of serving as a guide. /. Distinction I. A first warning to bear in mind concerns between history of the the historical inquiry as to the varying recog- principie and nitiOH of, or failure to recognize the practical lthertra™fr°m reason m respect to the other forms of the spirit.
cendental. 144 ACTIVITY IN GENERAL 145 This series of thoughts is not to be confounded with that other historical process, so long and so intricate, which had its origin in the debate between St. Augustine and Pelagius (or per haps rather in the opposition between Platonic mysticism and Aristotelian humanism), and through analogous debates, arising afresh during the Middle Ages and onward to modern times, culminating in the strife for the independence of morality and the practical reason in general from religion, which took place in the seventeenth century. The account of the various incidents of that debate perhaps occupies a larger space and a different place in the special histories of Ethic than it deserves. For it is not concerned with an entirely ethical or practical problem, but with that general philosophical movement which produced the progressive elimination of the tran scendental and founded the immanentistic con sideration of the real: a necessary condition for the conceivability of philosophy itself. In this lay the great importance of the affirmation that the practical and the moral spirit of man reveals itself as constant in the midst of the most various and opposed religious beliefs. This amounts to saying that it is independent of religion and knowable naturally and humanly, without the 146 PHILOSOPHY OF PRACTICAL PT.
necessity of having recourse to the authority of revelation and of making shipwreck in mystery. It is customary to say that in the seventeenth century free-thought definitely won the victory upon the point most ardently contested, and in this connection are recorded the names of Charron, Grotius, Spinoza, and Pierre Bayle. To these could be added that of G. B. Vico, who conceived of Providence as immanent and considered that morality arose from "a sense common to all men," from a judgment "without any sort of reflection," foundation of the natural rights of man. But should the word ''definite" be really used here? Whenever the idea of the transcendental reappears, even in the timid form of agnosticism, the autonomy of the practical reason is denied, or at least again put in doubt (and with it that of the whole human spirit).
Two examples only of this must suffice, but they are conspicuous. Emmanuel Kant, not having been able to surpass the mystery that he had formulated — the principle of the practical reason — the categoric imperative remained sus pended in the void, and in that void it invokes in relation to itself faith in a personal God and in a transcendental future life, which shall conciliate virtue and happiness, at variance in ACTIVITY IN GENERAL 147 the life lived upon earth. This scrap of mystery which Kant allowed to remain in his system, suffices to obscure that autonomy of the practical reason and that concept of spiritual productivity which he had affirmed with so much energy. Another example, perhaps even more character istic, is furnished by the Ethic that was pre valent for three centuries in the English School. It was a utilitarian Ethic and therefore incapable of truly founding moral reason. What was the consequence of that incapacity when recognized as such? Nothing but the renewed introduction of mystery, the explanation obtained by means of the idea of a personal God, assuming that most extravagant form known as " theological utilitarianism." By this theory, moral actions that in this life do not receive adequate recom pense and seem to be unjustified from the utili tarian point of view, are rewarded by God in another life, thus finding their economic motive for being carried out in the present life. In our theoretic treatment of the subject, we do not concern ourselves with the controversy, already mooted in the Eutyphron, as to whether sanctity be loved by the gods as sanctity, or whether it be sanctity because it is beloved by the gods l — a 1 Eutyphron> 10.
1 Eutyphron> 10.
148 PHILOSOPHY OF PRACTICAL PT.
question that in the Middle Ages was transformed into that other one, differently solved by Abelard, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus: whether the moral law be given by divine decree, or whether the idea of God does not of necessity coincide with the idea of moral law. We do not treat of this, since we are qccupied with the practical, not with theology or antitheology, and consider that the contest between philosophy and theology has been already solved and surpassed in the theory of knowledge. For the same reason, it seems to us that we should not trace its history in the History of the Philosophy of the Practical.1 //. Thedis- II. The true and proper history of the practical tine 't 'ion of the practical from principle, conceived as autonomous, and of the the theoretical.
problem concerning the identity or the distinc tion of the practical from theory, has a different line of development. As a rule this problem is referred back to the celebrated sayings of Socrates, that virtue is knowledge and vice ignorance, and to the corrections that Aristotle, while accepting, proposes in them, when he takes note of the part that belongs to the non- cognoscitive element. But, as often happens, 1 The history of the enfranchising of Ethic from Religion has been done with especial care by Jodl, Gesch. d. Ethik als philos. Wissensch. vol. I2. (Stuttgart — Berlin, 1906). For Vico, cf. my book, The Philosophy of ACTIVITY IN GENERAL 149 those sayings and those corrections have been taken as being more profound than they genuinely were and could be. This, if it have not aided the exactness of historical interpreta tion, has nevertheless stimulated and fecundated thought. On reading without prejudice the parts of the Memorabilia, of the Platonic dialogues, of the Nicomachean Ethics, and of the Magna Moralia that relate to it, it appears evident that what is treated of in them is the altogether empirical question of the importance that mental development has for practical life, and whether knowledge suffices for this, or natural dispositions and discipline of the passions be not also necessary. Aristotle replied to Socrates, who had insisted upon the element of knowing, conceiving virtue as knowledge (XOYO?), by modifying the statement with the assertion that virtue is not indeed simply knowledge, but is with knowledge (/xera ^0701;). In these very ingenuous considerations is to be found at the most implicitly, but certainly not explicitly, the problem that was only stated later on; and it would be rash to classify Socrates as an intellectualist and Aristotle as a voluntarist. It is certain that the Aristotelian philosophy, in accordance with good sense, 150 PHILOSOPHY OF PRACTICAL FT.
preserved the distinction between the two forms of the spirit, the theoretical and the practical, the reason and the will, a distinction that has also passed into the scholastic philosophy (ratio cognoscibilis, ratio appetibilis) and into that of the Renaissance. But it remained always vague, sometimes brought into prominence, some times, on the other hand, attenuated. Almost dissipated in those who conceive the principles of the practical as something similar or ana logous to mathematical truths (Cudworth, Clarke, Wollaston, etc.), it always reaffirms itself when importance is given to the affections and passions, as is the case with many thinkers of the seventeenth century (Bacon, Descartes, Spinoza, Vico); and the doctrines of the Scottish school of sensationalists contributed not a little to keep it alive.
It seems indubitable that Emmanuel Kant is to be connected to some extent rather with this last tradition than with that of the intellectualists: with Kant the practical reason possessed a domain of its own altogether distinct from and almost antithetical to the domain of the theo retical. But it is erroneous to present the successors of Kant as forgetful of the practical reason and as resolving every spiritual manifesta- ACTIVITY IN GENERAL 151 tion in the theoretical form of the spirit. For instance, Fichte, who had a very strong con sciousness of the peculiarity of the practical activity, did not do this, nor did Hegel, though as commonly as unjustly accused of being a cold intellectualist. It should suffice to recall how Hegel always opposed that view of Plato and of other thinkers (for example Campanella) who assigned the government of the State to philosophers, a view in which the resolution of the practical into the theoretical spirit and of the will into knowledge seemed to become concrete. For Hegel, on the contrary, the domain of history is different from that of philosophy; history is indeed the idea, but the idea that shows itself in a natural and unconscious manner, and philosophical genius is not political genius. Nor must we forget the importance that he accorded to passion, to custom, to what is called the heart and is wont to be opposed to the brain and to argument. For Hegel, the will is not thought, but a special kind of thought, that is to say, thought which trans lates itself into existence, the impulse to give oneself existence. Whereas in the theoretical process, the spirit takes possession of the object and makes it its own by thinking, that is 152 PHILOSOPHY OF PRACTICAL PT.
by universalizing it, in the practical process a difference is also stated and determined, which on the other hand consists of its own determina tions and ends. The theoretical is contained in the practical, since there cannot be will without intelligence; but, on the other hand, the theoretical contains the practical, since to think is also to act. Hegel, in short, distinguishes the practical from the theoretical and unifies them, while retaining the distinction.1 What is not perhaps altogether clear to him, notwithstand ing his view that history is the idea in a natural and unconscious mode, is the unreflective character of willing. To have given relief to this character, although in the exaggerated and inacceptable form of the will as blind and uncon scious, is the merit of Arthur Schopenhauer, who is indeed far from standing alone in assign ing an eminent place to the will, but connects himself with all the Kantian and post-Kantian philosophy, and in the first place with Fichte and Schelling. ///. The III. The mixture of philosophical concepts mixtures of philosophy of with empirical concepts and with rules is a vice the practical ati?ndescrip~ common to nearly all treatises of the Philosophy of the practical, beginning with the Nico- 1 Phil. d. Rechts, § 4, Zus.; Gesch. d. Philos. ii. pp. 66, 169.
ACTIVITY IN GENERAL 153 machean Ethic, which, although in certain places loftily philosophical, should be placed in greater part rather at the head of the history of the works of the moralists and of writers on the practical, than of Ethic. The author himself recognized this practical character when he wrote, Trepl TWV TTpaKT&v \0709 TVTTO) Kal ovtc a/cpifta)? o \eyeo-0ai.1 And in this appears the prejudice that practical philosophy should be occupied with the practical: eVet ovv fj irapovaa Trpay/jLareia ov Oecopias eveicd eaTiv WGirep al a\\at, (ou jap LVO, elSw/Aev TL €(mv TI aperrj (TKeTTTO/jieOa aXX' lv* ajaOol ywd)/jie6a, eVel ovftev av r}V o<f>e\os avr^?), icr\.2 Even the greatest thinkers of modern times are not exempt from that characteristic. Emmanuel Kant, while recognizing that the division and treatment of duties do not belong to the Critique of the Sciences (he should therefore have excluded them from philosophy, which is always criticism), finally relegates them to what he calls the " system " (and is in truth the anti-systematic) 3 and writes the Metaphysic of Customs, divided into the doctrines of law and of the virtues. Fichte, in his System of Ethic, makes the applied follow the theoretical part. Hegel gives the doctrine 1 Eth. Nicom. 1 103. 2 See above.
3 Kritik d, prakt. Vern., ed. Kirchmann, pp. 7-8.
i54 PHILOSOPHY OF PRACTICAL FT.