The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity
GA 4
12. Moral Imagination
(Darwinism and Morality)
[ 1 ] The free mind acts according to its impulses, which are intuitions that are selected from the whole of its world of ideas through thinking. For the unfree mind, the reason why it selects a certain intuition from its world of ideas in order to base an action on it lies in the world of perception given to it, i.e. in its previous experiences. Before coming to a decision, he remembers what someone has done or approved of doing in a case analogous to his own, or what God has commanded for this case and so on, and he acts accordingly. For the free spirit, these preconditions are not the only impulses for action. It makes an absolutely first decision. It does not care what others have done in this case, nor what they have ordered in return. He has purely idealistic reasons that move him to single out a particular one from the sum of his concepts and to translate it into action. His action, however, will belong to perceptible reality. What he accomplishes will therefore be identical with a very specific perceptual content. The concept will have to be realized in a concrete individual event. As a concept it will not be able to contain this individual case. It will only be able to relate to it in the same way that a concept relates to a perception, for example, as the concept of a lion relates to a single lion. The middle link between concept and perception is the conception (cf. 5. 107 f.). The unfree spirit is given this middle link from the outset. The motives are present in its consciousness from the outset as ideas. If it wants to do something, it does it as it has seen it, or as it is ordered to do it for the individual case. Authority therefore works best through examples, that is, by transmitting very specific individual actions to the consciousness of the unfree spirit. The Christian acts less according to the teachings than according to the example of the Savior. Rules have less value for positive action than for refraining from certain actions. Laws only enter into the general conceptual form when they forbid actions, but not when they command them to be done. Laws about what it should do must be given to the unfree spirit in a very concrete form: Clean the street in front of your front gate! Pay your taxes in this particular amount at tax office X! and so on. The laws to prevent actions have a conceptual form: Thou shalt not steal! Thou shalt not commit adultery! However, these laws only have an effect on the unfree spirit by referring to a specific idea, for example the corresponding temporal punishments, or the torment of conscience, or eternal damnation, and so on.
[ 2 ] As soon as the impulse to an action is present in the general conceptual form (for example: you should do good to your fellow human beings! you should live in such a way that you best promote your well-being!), then the concrete idea of the action (the relationship of the concept to a perceptual content) must first be found in each individual case. With the free spirit, which is not driven by any example or fear of punishment, etc., this transformation of the concept into the imagination is always necessary.
[ 3 ] Man first produces concrete concepts from the sum of his ideas through the imagination. What the free spirit needs in order to realize its ideas, in order to assert itself, is therefore the moral imagination. It is the source of the free spirit's actions. That is why only people with a moral imagination are actually morally productive. Mere moral preachers, i.e. people who spin out moral rules without being able to condense them into concrete ideas, are morally unproductive. They are like critics who know how to intelligently explain what a work of art should be like, but are themselves unable to achieve the slightest thing.
[ 4 ] The moral imagination, in order to realize its conception, must intervene in a certain field of perceptions. Man's action does not create perceptions, but reshapes the perceptions that already exist, giving them a new form. In order to be able to reshape a certain object of perception or a sum of such objects according to a moral conception, one must have understood the lawful content (the previous mode of action that one wants to reshape or give a new direction to) of this perceptual image. One must also find the mode by which this lawfulness can be transformed into a new one. This part of moral effectiveness is based on knowledge of the phenomenal world with which one is dealing. It is therefore to be sought in a branch of scientific knowledge in general. Moral action thus presupposes, in addition to the moral faculty of ideas, 1only superficiality could see in the use of the word faculty in this and other passages of this writing a relapse into the doctrine of the old psychology of the faculties of the soul. The connection with 5. 95 f. The connection with what has been said gives precisely the meaning of the word and of the moral imagination the ability to transform the world of perceptions without breaking through its natural-law connection. This ability is moral technique. It can be learned in the same way that science can be learned. In general, people are more suited to finding concepts for the already finished world than to productively determining future actions from their imagination that do not yet exist. It is therefore quite possible for people without a moral imagination to receive moral concepts from others and skillfully imprint them on reality. The reverse case can also occur, where people with moral imagination are without the technical skill and then have to use other people to realize their ideas.
[ 5 ] In so far as knowledge of the objects of our sphere of action is necessary for moral action, our action is based on this knowledge. What comes into consideration here are natural laws. We are dealing with natural science, not ethics.
[ 6 ] The moral imagination and the moral faculty of ideas can only become the object of knowledge after they have been produced by the individual. Then, however, they no longer regulate life, but have already regulated it. They are to be understood as acting causes like all others (they are merely purposes for the subject). We deal with them as a natural theory of moral ideas.
[ 7 ] An ethics as a science of norms cannot exist alongside this.
[ 8 ] The normative character of moral laws has been maintained at least to the extent that ethics has been understood in the sense of dietetics, which derives general rules from the living conditions of the organism in order to then influence the body in particular on the basis of these rules (Paulsen, System der Ethik). This comparison is false because our moral life cannot be compared with the life of the organism. The effectiveness of the organism is there without our intervention; we find its laws ready-made in the world, so we can search for them and then apply the ones we find. Moral laws, however, are first created by us. We cannot apply them before they are created. The error arises from the fact that moral laws are not created anew at every moment, but are perpetuated. Those inherited from the ancestors then appear to be given like the natural laws of the organism. They are not, however, applied by a later generation with the same right as dietary rules. For they apply to the individual and not, like the laws of nature, to the specimen of a species. As an organism I am such a specimen of a species, and I will live according to nature if I apply the natural laws of the species in my particular case; as a moral being I am an individual and have my own laws. 2When Paulsen (5. 15 of the book cited) says: "Different natural dispositions and living conditions require a different spiritual and moral diet, just as they require a different physical diet", he is very close to the correct insight, but he does not hit the decisive point. Insofar as I am an individual, I do not need a diet. Dietetics is the art of harmonizing the particular specimen with the general laws of the species. As an individual, however, I am not a specimen of the species.
[ 9 ] The view expressed here seems to contradict the basic doctrine of modern natural science, which is known as the theory of evolution. But it only appears to. By evolution is understood the real emergence of the later from the earlier in a natural-law way. Development in the organic world is understood to mean the fact that the later (more perfect) organic forms are real descendants of the earlier (imperfect) ones and have emerged from them in accordance with natural law. The proponents of the organic theory of development would actually have to imagine that there was once an epoch on earth when a being could have followed the gradual emergence of the reptiles from the uramniotes with his eyes, if he could have been present as an observer at that time and had been endowed with a correspondingly long life span. In the same way, evolutionary theorists would have to imagine that a being could have observed the emergence of the solar system from the Kant-Laplace primordial nebula if it had been able to stay freely in the region of the world ether in a corresponding place during the infinitely long time. The fact that in such a conception both the nature of the uramniotes and that of the Kant-Laplace world nebula would have to be thought of differently than the materialistic thinkers do is not a consideration here. But it should not occur to any evolutionary theorist to claim that he can extract from his concept of the primordial animal that of the reptile with all its characteristics, even if he has never seen a reptile. Nor should the solar system be deduced from the concept of Kant-Laplace's primordial nebula, if this concept of the primordial nebula is thought to be directly determined only by the perception of the primordial nebula. In other words, the developmental theorist, if he thinks consistently, must maintain that later phases of development result in reality from earlier ones, that when we have given the concept of the imperfect and that of the perfect, we can see the connection; but in no way should he admit that the concept obtained from the earlier is sufficient to develop the later from it. From this it follows for the ethicist that he can indeed see the connection of later moral concepts with earlier ones; but not that even a single new moral idea can be drawn from earlier ones. This produced content is a given for the ethicist just as the reptiles are a given for the naturalist. The reptiles emerged from the uramniotes; but the naturalist cannot extract the concept of reptiles from the concept of uramniotes. Later moral ideas develop from earlier ones; but the ethicist cannot extract from the moral concepts of an earlier cultural period those of a later one. The confusion is caused by the fact that we, as natural scientists, already have the facts before us and only recognize them afterwards; whereas in moral action we ourselves first create the facts which we recognize afterwards. In the process of developing the moral world order, we do what nature does at a lower level: we change something perceptible. The ethical norm can therefore not initially be recognized like a natural law, but must be created. Only when it is there can it become an object of cognition.
[ 10 ] But can we not measure the new by the old? Will not every person be forced to measure what is produced by his moral imagination against the traditional moral teachings? For that which is to reveal itself as morally productive, this is just as absurd as it would be to measure a new natural form against the old and say: because the reptiles do not agree with the primordial omniotes, they are an unjustified (pathological) form.
[ 11 ] Ethical individualism is therefore not in opposition to a correctly understood theory of development, but follows directly from it. Haeckel's family tree from the primitive animals up to man as an organic being should be able to be traced up to the individual as a moral being in a certain sense without interrupting the natural laws and without breaking through the uniform development. Nowhere, however, could the being of an ancestral species be deduced from the being of a subsequent species. But as true as it is that the moral ideas of the individual have perceptibly emerged from those of its ancestors, it is also true that the same is morally unfruitful if it does not itself have moral ideas.
[ 12 ] The same ethical individualism that I have developed on the basis of the preceding views could also be derived from the theory of development. The final conviction would be the same; only the path by which it is attained would be different.
[ 13 ] The emergence of completely new moral ideas from the moral imagination is just as little miraculous for the theory of development as the emergence of a new animal species from another. But this theory, as a monistic view of the world, must reject in moral life as well as in natural life any merely accessible, non-ideally perceptible otherworldly (metaphysical) influence. It follows the same principle that drives it when it seeks the causes of new organic forms and does not invoke the intervention of an otherworldly being that brings forth every new species according to a new idea of creation through supernatural influence. Just as monism cannot use a supernatural idea of creation to explain living beings, it is also impossible for it to derive the moral order of the world from causes that do not lie within the tangible world. He cannot find the essence of a will as a moral one exhausted by attributing it to a continuing supernatural influence on moral life (divine world government from outside), or to a special temporal revelation (the giving of the ten commandments), or to the appearance of God on earth (Christ). What happens to and in the human being through all of this only becomes moral when it becomes an individual possession in the human experience. For monism, moral processes are products of the world like everything else that exists and their causes must be sought in the world, that is, because man is the bearer of morality, in man.
[ 14 ] Ethical individualism is thus the culmination of the edifice that Darwin and Haeckel strove for in natural science. It is a spiritualized theory of development applied to moral life.
[ 15 ] Whoever from the outset assigns the concept of the natural an arbitrarily limited area in a narrow-minded manner can then easily come to find no room in it for free individual action. The consistent developmental theorist cannot fall into such narrow-mindedness. He cannot conclude the natural mode of development in the ape and grant man a "supernatural" origin; he must, even in seeking the natural ancestors of man, already seek the spirit in nature; nor can he stop at the organic activities of man and find only these natural, but he must also regard the morally free life as a spiritual continuation of the organic.
[ 16 ] In accordance with his basic conception, the developmental theorist can only assert that present moral action emerges from other kinds of world events; he must leave the characteristics of action, that is, its determination as a free, to the immediate observation of action. After all, he only claims that humans have evolved from ancestors who are not yet human. How humans are constituted must be determined by observing them. The results of this observation cannot contradict a correctly considered history of development. Only the assertion that the results are such as to exclude a natural world order could not be brought into agreement with the newer direction of natural science. 3It is right that we call thoughts (ethical ideas) objects of observation. For even if the formations of thought do not enter the field of observation during mental activity, they can nevertheless become objects of observation afterwards. And in this way we have gained our characteristic of action.
[ 17 ] Ethical individualism has nothing to fear from a self-understanding natural science: observation yields freedom as a characteristic of the perfect form of human action. This freedom must be attributed to human volition insofar as it realizes purely ideal intuitions. For these are not the results of a necessity acting on them from outside, but rather something that stands on its own. If man finds that an action is the image of such an ideal intuition, he perceives it as a free one. Freedom lies in this characteristic of an action.
[ 18 ] From this point of view, what about the distinction between the two sentences already mentioned above (5. 22 and 16)? To be free is to be able to do what one wants-and the other: To be able to desire and not to desire at will is the real meaning of the dogma of free will? Hamerling bases his view of free will precisely on this distinction by declaring the first to be correct and the second to be an absurd tautology. He says: I can do what I want. But to say: I can want what I want is an empty tautology. - Whether I can do, that is, realize in reality, what I want, that is, what I have set before myself as the idea of my action, depends on external circumstances and on my technical skill (cf. p. 193 f.). To be free means to be able to determine the ideas (motives) on which my actions are based through my moral imagination. Freedom is impossible if something outside of me (mechanical process or only an inferred otherworldly God) determines my moral ideas. I am therefore only free when I produce these ideas myself, not when I can carry out the motives that another being has placed in me. A free being is one who can want what he himself considers to be right. He who does something other than what he wants must be driven to this other by motives that do not lie within him. Such a person acts unfree. To be able to want at will what one considers right or not right therefore means: to be free or unfree at will. This is of course just as absurd as seeing freedom in the ability to do what one must want. But Hamerling asserts the latter when he says: "It is perfectly true that the will is always determined by motives, but it is absurd to say that it is therefore unfree; for a greater freedom can neither be desired nor conceived for it than that of realizing itself according to its own strength and determination. - Yes, there is a greater freedom to be desired, and that is the true one. Namely: to determine the reasons for one's own will.
[ 19 ] A man can be induced under certain circumstances to refrain from carrying out what he wants. To be dictated what he should do, that is, to want what another and not he considers right, is something he is only capable of insofar as he does not feel free.
[ 20 ] The external powers can prevent me from doing what I want. Then they simply condemn me to do nothing or to lack freedom. Only when they subjugate my spirit and chase my motives out of my head and want to put their own in their place do they intend my lack of freedom. The church is therefore not only against doing, but especially against impure thoughts, that is: the motives of my actions. It makes me impure when all motives that it does not specify appear impure to it. A church or other community creates bondage when its priests or teachers make themselves masters of conscience, that is, when the faithful must obtain from them (from the confessional) the motives of their actions.
Addition to the new edition 1918
[ 21 ] In these remarks on human volition, it is shown what man can experience in his actions in order to come to the awareness through this experience: my volition is free. It is of particular importance that the justification for describing a volition as free is achieved through the experience: an ideal intuition is realized in the volition. This can only be the result of observation, but it is so in the sense that human volition observes itself in a developmental current whose goal is to achieve such a possibility of volition borne by purely ideal intuition. It can be achieved because in ideal intuition nothing but its own being built upon itself is at work. If such an intuition is present in human consciousness, then it has not developed out of the processes of the organism (see p. 145 ff.), but the organic activity has withdrawn to make room for the ideal. If I observe a volition that is the image of intuition, then the organically necessary activity has also withdrawn from this volition. The will is free. He will not be able to observe this freedom of volition who is not able to see how free volition consists in the fact that it is only through the intuitive element that the necessary activity of the human organism is paralyzed, pushed back, and replaced by the spiritual activity of the idea-filled will. Only those who cannot make this observation of the twofoldness of a free will believe in the lack of freedom of every will. Those who can make this observation come to the realization that man is unfree in so far as he cannot complete the process of restraining organic activity; but that this lack of freedom strives towards freedom, and that this freedom is by no means an abstract ideal, but a directive force inherent in human nature. Man is free to the extent that he can realize in his will the same mood of soul that lives in him when he is conscious of the development of purely ideal (spiritual) intuitions.