Civilization and ethics

FOOTNOTES

• PREFACE Notes
• CHAPTER III Notes
• CHAPTER V Notes
• CHAPTER VI Notes
• CHAPTER VII Notes
• CHAPTER VIII Notes
• CHAPTER IX Notes
• CHAPTER X Notes
• CHAPTER XI Notes
• CHAPTER XII Notes
• CHAPTER XIII Notes
• CHAPTER XIV Notes
• CHAPTER XV Notes
• CHAPTER XVI Notes
• CHAPTER XX Notes

Preface Notes

1 [Translator’s Note.—Weltanschauung. This compound word may be translated “theory of the universe,” “world-theory,” “world-conception,” or “world-view.” The first is misleading as suggesting, wrongly, a scientific explanation of the universe; the second and third as suggesting, less ambitiously but still wrongly, an explanation of how and why our human world is what it is. The last indicates a sufficiently wide knowledge and consideration of our corner of the universe to allow all factors to be taken into consideration which bear on the question at issue.

There may be passages in which it is desirable to vary the translation, and others in which it is possible to give the meaning in more elegant English, for good English style does not take kindly to such compound words. But this latter consideration can be only a secondary one in the translation of a philosophical work, the first object of which must be to ensure that the author’s meaning shall be reproduced as clearly as possible.]

CHAPTER III Notes

2 Friedrich Jodl: A History of Ethics as Philosophical Science, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (Vol. I., 1906; Vol. II., 1912). It treats of the ethics of Western philosophy only.

CHAPTER V Notes

3 Very important for our knowledge of the old philosophy and ethics are the ten books entitled The Lives and Teaching of Famous Philosophers, Diogenes Laertius in the third century after Christ. Just because they are purely anecdotal, They have preserved for us much information and many views which otherwise—for the works on the philosophers treated of have all been lost—we should not possess.

4 Xenophon, one of the generals who led the ten thousand back out of Asia, wrote down his recollections of Socrates after the latter’s death. By his report of the simple conversations of the master he seeks to render impotent for all time the accusation that he corrupted the youth and taught atheism, for even after his death teachers of rhetoric did in fact draw up formal complaints against him. Xenophon’s straightforward, realistic portrait of Socrates is extraordinarily valuable.

5 The most important dialogues in this connexion are the Protagoras, the Gorgias, the Phædrus, the Symposium, the Phædo, and the Philebus.

6 Of the writings of the Cyrenaics and the Cynics, of Democritus, Epicurus, Zeno, and the older Stoics hardly anything has come down to us. Our knowledge of them is derived mostly from Diogenes Laertius.

The Cyrenaics were known as the philosophers of pleasure because Aristippus, the first preacher of the world-wisdom of joy, hailed from Cyrene. The Cynics, or dog-philosophers, derived their name from the fact that they despised the amenities of life and often delighted in a coarse naturalness. The best known of them is Diogenes of Sinope (died 323 B.C.).

Zeno’s philosophy was called Stoicism because he taught at Athens in a colonnaded portico called the Stoa Poikile (i.e., the painted portico).

7 Translator’s Note.—Irony is intentional self-depreciation or disclaiming what one really possesses.

8 Of Seneca quite a series of ethical treatises have come down to us. We mention here: On Clemency (De Clementia, addressed to Nero); On Benefits (De Beneficiis); On Tranquillity of Soul (De Tranquillitate Animi), On Anger (De Ira).

Our knowledge of the teachings of Epictetus we owe to his pupil, Flavius Arrianus, the historian. The latter has recorded a number of his master’s lectures in eight books, of which four have survived. In addition to these he collected and published a number of his sayings on morality in the Enchiridion.

In the popular philosophizings of Cicero (106-43 B.C.) as well, we can see an attempt to produce a new ethic which is really living.

CHAPTER VI Notes

9 Bacon was Lord Chancellor under James I. of England, but was in 1621 deprived of his office because found guilty of corruption. His two chief works are the Novum Organum Scientiarum (1620) and De Dignitate et Augmentis Scientiarum (1623). Of the New Atlantis only a fragment has survived.

10 See the writer’s books: Das Messianitäts- und Leidensgeheimniss. Eine Skizze des Lebens Jesu (1901). English version: The Mystery of the Kingdom of God (1914 A. & C. Black). Geschichte der Leben-Jesu Forschung (1906; new edition, 1922). English version: The Quest of the Historical Jesus (1911; 3rd impression, 1922 A. & C. Black).

11 Gassendi: De vita, moribus, et doctrina Epicuri (1647) and Syntagma philosophiæ Epicuri (1649).

CHAPTER VII Notes

12 D. Hartley: Observations on Man, his Frame, his Duty, and his Expectations (1749; 6th ed., 1834).

13 D. von Holbach: Système de la nature ou des lois du monde physique et du monde moral (1770).

14 Thomas Hobbes: Elementa philosophica de cive (1642); Leviathan, or the Matter, Form, and Authority of Government (1651); De homine.

15 John Locke: An Essay concerning Human Understanding (2 vols., 1690).

16 Adrien Helvetius: Traité de l’Esprit (1758).

17 Jeremy Bentham: An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1780). E. Dumont (1759-1828) of Geneva, an admirer of Bentham who was domiciled in England, reproduced this work in French in a free abbreviation as Traités de législation civile et pénale (1802). Frederick Edward Beneke followed this abbreviation when he produced a German translation with the title: Grundsätze der Civil- und Criminalgesetzgebung (1830).

18 Translator’s Note.—German “enthusiastisches Handeln.” The explanatory periphrasis is added once for all, since “enthusiastic” implies a kind and degree of feeling which is not implied in these philosophical passages.

19 David Hume: A Treatise of Human Nature: Being an Attempt to introduce the Experimental Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects (1740). German translation by Heinrich Jacob (2 vols., 1791): Inquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751).

20 Adam Smith: The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759); Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1770). German translation of The Theory of Moral Sentiments by L. Th. Kosegarten (1791). Adam Smith was Professor of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow.

21 “L’amour de la gloire est inné dans les belles âmes; il n’y a qu’à l’animer, il n’y a que l’exciter, et des hommes qui végétaient jusqu’alors, enflammès par ce heureux instinct, vous paraîtront changés en demi-dieux.”—Œuvres de Frédéric le Grand, vol. ix., p. 98.

22 R. Cudworth: Intellectual System of the Universe (1678); Treatise concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality (postumous, 1731).

23 H. More: Enchiridium Ethicum (1667).

24 S. Clarke: A Discourse concerning the Unchangeable Obligations of Natural Religion, and the Truth and Certainty of the Christian Revelation (1706).

25 R. Cumberland: De legibus naturæ disquisitio philosophica (1672).

26 W. Wollaston: The Religion of Nature Delineated (1722).

27 Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times (3 vols., 1711). In the second volume there is included his ethical treatise entitled, Inquiry concerning Virtue or Merit, which appeared first, in 1699, independently. It was published in French in 1745 by Denis Diderot.

28 F. Hutcheson: An Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (1725); A System of Moral Philosophy (1755, posthumous).

29 Joseph Butler: Fifteen Sermons upon Human Nature, or Man considered as a Moral Agent (1726).

CHAPTER VIII Notes

30 The freely thinking, anti-dogmatic religiousness of Socinianism had maintained itself chiefly in Poland, Holland, Hungary, England, and North America. Its closer adherents called themselves also Latitudinarians, the more distant ones Unitarians. The fact that religious rationalism had already existed in a literary form made its appearance in the eighteenth century easier.

31 Tindal’s work bears the title Christianity as Old as the Creation (1730). Pierre Bayle’s famous Dictionnaire historique et critique appeared for the first time in two volumes in 1695.

32 The most impressive, and perhaps the most profound document of the religion of reason is the confession of faith which Rousseau in his novel Emile (1762) puts into the mouth of a country minister from Savoy.

33 F. V. Reinhard: Essay concerning the Plan which the Founder of the Christian Religion drew up for the Benefit of Mankind (1791; 4th ed., 1798). K. H. Venturini: Natural History of the Great Prophet of Nazareth (1800-1802). See for an account of them the writer’s work: The Quest of the Historical Jesus (1906; 4th ed., 1922 (German); 1st English ed., 1910; 3rd, 1922).

34 Expulsion of the Jesuits from Portugal, 1759; from France, 1764; from Spain and Naples, 1767; from Parma, 1768.

35 Short Theses upon the Sin of Witchcraft and the Practice of Trial Therefor.

36 See G. Lenôtre: “Les Agents Royalists sous la Revolution” (Revue des Deux Mondes, 1922).

37 Her dictum is given in the English periodical, The Atlas, in its issue of January 27th, 1828.

38 Esquissè d’un tableau historique des progrès de l’esprit humain. It was published in 1795, after the author’s death, at the expense of the National Convention.

CHAPTER IX Notes

39 Immanuel Kant: Kritik der reinen Vernunft (1781); Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten (1785); Kritik der praktischen Vernunft (1788); Kritik der Urteilskraft (1790); Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft (1793); Metaphysik der Sitten (1797).

CHAPTER X Notes

40 Tractatus theologico-politicus (anonymous, 1670); Ethica ordine geometrico demonstrata (posthumous and anonymous, 1677; German translation by Johann Lorenz Schmidt, 1744); Tractatus politicus (posthumous and anonymous, 1677). First complete edition of Spinoza’s works, 1802-3.

41 Lao-tze (born, circa. 604 B.C.): Taoteking; Chwang-tse (fourth century B.C.): The True Book of the Southern Flower Land; Lie-tse (fourth century B.C.): The True Book of the Primitive Water-spring.

42 G. W. Leibniz: Système nouveau de la nature, et de la communication des substances (1695); Nouveaux Essais (1704); La Monadologie (1714).

CHAPTER XI Notes

43 The greatest representatives of Gnosticism are Basilides, Valentinus, and Marcion, all three living in the first half of the second century B.C. At the beginning of that century all sorts of Gnostic systems spring up, as did speculative ones at the beginning of the nineteenth. The two great Christian teachers of Alexandria, Flavius Clemens at the end of the second century A.D., and Origen at the beginning of the third, try to bring the Gnostic speculations into harmony with the doctrine of the Church.

44 J. G. Fichte: The Foundations of All Scientific Theories (1794); The System of Moral Teaching According to the Principles of Science (1798); The Destiny of Man (1800); How to Attain to the Happy Life (1806); Addresses to the German Nation (1808).

A complete edition of J. G. Fichte’s works was edited by his son, J. H. Fichte, in 1845 and the following years. A good selection has been published by F. Medicus (1908 to 1912).

45 This and the following quotations are from The Destiny of Man.

CHAPTER XII Notes

46 D. E. Schleiermacher: Discourses on Religion for the Educated among its Contemners (1799); Monologues (1800); Outlines of a Critique of Moral Philosophy down to the Present Day (1803); Christian Belief (1821-23); Draft of a System of Moral Philosophy (posthumous, 1835).

CHAPTER XIII Notes

47 Friedrich Hegel: Phenomenology of the Spirit (1807); The Science of Logic (3 vols., 1812-26); Encyclopædia of the Philosophical Sciences (1817); The Philosophy of Law (1821); The Philosophy of History (posthumous, 1840). Complete edition of his works in eighteen volumes, prepared by his pupils, 1832-45.

48 The Encyclopædia, Part III. (1845 ed.), p. 386.

49 The Encyclopædia of Philosophical Sciences, Part III. (1845 ed.), p. 359.

CHAPTER XIV Notes

50 F. E. Beneke: Prolegomena to a Physiology of Morals (1822); The Natural System of Practical Philosophy (3 vols., 1837-40). By his appearance as a champion of utilitarianism and his consequent attitude of hostility to Kant, Beneke drew upon himself the enmity of Hegel, and was compelled in 1822 to stop the course of lectures which he was giving as a Privat-dozent at Berlin University. After Hegel’s death he filled a professorship at Berlin.

51 L. A. Feuerbach: What is Christianity? (1841); Divinity, Freedom, and Immortality from the Standpoint of Anthropology (1866).

52 Ernst Laas: Idealism and Positivism (3 vols., 1879-84).

53 The Physiology of Society is the fourth volume of Comte’s Course of Positive Philosophy (6 vols., 1830-42).

54 John Stuart Mill: Principles of Political Economy (2 vols., 1848); Utilitarianism (1861). There is a German translation of his works by Th. Gomperz (12 vols., 1869-86). It was J. S. Mill who introduced into philosophy the word “utilitarian” as the descriptive title of this particular school of ethic.

55 Charles Darwin: The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871).

56 Herbert Spencer: Social Statics (1851); The Data of Ethics (1879); The Principles of Ethics (1892).

57 Henri de Saint-Simon: L’Organisateur (1819-20); Catéchisme des Industriels (1823-24).

58 Charles Fourier: Le nouveau monde industriel et sociétaire (1829).

59 P. J. Proudhon: Qu’est-ce que la Propriété? (1840).

60 Robert Owen: A New View of Society (1813); and Book of the New Moral World (7 parts, 1836-49).

61 Ferdinand Lassalle: Das System der erwonbenen Rechte (2 vols., 1861); Offenes Antwortschreiben an das Centralkomitee zur Berufung eines allgemeinen deutschen Arbeiterkongresses (1863).

62 Karl Marx: Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848, in collaboration with Friedrich Engels); Capital (vol. i., 1867; the second and third volumes were published in 1884 and 1894 by Friedrich Engels).

63 The same spirit pervades the work of the national economist, Gustav Schmoller of Berlin: Concerning Some Questions of Law and National Economy (1875). Schmoller was the leader of the so-called “Socialists of the Chair.”

64 The first to set before Christendom its duty to take part in the solution of the social question is Félicité de Lamennais (1782-1854) in his Paroles d’un croyant (1833). This book was condemned by the Pope in 1834.

65 The English public was made familiar with working-class misery by Kingsley’s novel Yeast (which appeared in 1848 in Fraser’s Magazine, and in 1851 was printed as a book), and by two articles of Henry Mayhew’s in the Morning Chronicle (December 14th and 18th, 1849). That Christian Socialism made its appearance first in England and France is connected with the fact that the industry which creates social problems developed earliest in these countries.

66 Leo Tolstoi: My Confessions; German translation as Worin besteht mein Glaube (1884); French as Ma Religion (1884); English as Christ’s Christianity (1885). See also What then shall we do? (German, 1886). The fact that Tolstoi’s ethical Christianity associates itself with contempt for civilization brings it near to primitive Christianity. But the all-important question, how the power of the ethical thoughts of Jesus are to work in the temper and the circumstances of modern times, it does not answer. Tolstoi is a great stimulator but no guide.

67 Eduard Bernstein: The Presuppositions of Socialism, and the Tasks of Social Democracy (1899).

CHAPTER XV Notes

68 What Schopenhauer wrote after this, his chief work, which was printed when he was thirty, are only appendixes and popular explanations of it: Concerning the Will in Nature (1836), The Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics (1840), Parerga and Paralipomena (2 vols., 1851).

69 In 1802-1804 Anquetil Duperron (1731-1805) published in two volumes, with a Latin translation, the Oupnek’hat, a collection of fifty Upanishads, which he had brought back from India in a Persian text.

70 The World as Will and Idea, vol. ii., chap. xli.

71 The World as Will and Idea, vol. i., chap. lxix.

72 That the man who has won through to complete world- and life-denial remains holy even if he commits actions which according to accepted ideas are unethical, is taught by the Bhagavadgita as well as by the Upanishads.

73 The World as Will and Idea, vol. i., chap. lxviii.

74 Friedrich Nietzsche: Old-fashioned Reflexions (4 parts, 1873-1876), Human and All too Human (3 vols., 1878-1880), Joyous Science (1882), Thus spake Zarathustra (4 parts, 1883-1885), Beyond Good and Evil (1886), On the Genealogy of Morality (1887), The Will to Power (posthumous, 1906).

75 Max Stirner (1806-1856), whose real name was Kaspar Schmidt, has recently been regarded as a predecessor of Nietzsche’s on account of his book, The Individual and His Property (1845), in which he supports the theory of merciless egoism. But he is not one. He has provided no really deep philosophical background for his anarchistic egoism. He speaks as a mere logician, and does not rise above the level of the Greek sophists. A religious reverence for life, such as Nietzsche feels, is not to be found in him.

CHAPTER XVI Notes

76 H. Sidgwick: The Method of Ethics (1874). (German translation by C. Bauer, 1909.)

77 Leslie Stephen: The Science of Ethics (1882).

78 S. Alexander: Moral Order and Progress: An Analysis of Ethical Conceptions (1889).

79 Wm. Wundt: Ethics: An Examination of the Facts and Law of the Moral Life (1887).

80 Friedrich Paulsen: A System of Ethics (1889).

81 Friedrich Jodl: A History of Ethics as Philosophical Science (2 vols., 2nd ed., 1906 and 1912).

82 Georg von Gizyki: Moral Philosophy, expounded so as to be intelligible to all (1888).

83 Harald Höffding (a Dane): Ethics (1887). (German translation, 1888.)

Georg Simmel (1858-1918) adopts a critical attitude towards modern “scientific” ethics in his Introduction to Moral Science (1892).

84 H. Cohen: Kant’s Foundation given to Ethics (1877); The Ethic of the Pure Will (1904).

85 W. Herrmann: Ethics (1901).

In France Charles Renouvier (1838-1903) tries, in his Science of the Moral (1869), to restore the Kantian system of ethics.

86 Jas. Martineau: Types of Ethical Theory (2 vols., 1885).

87 F. H. Bradley: Ethical Studies (1876).

88 T. H. Green: Prolegomena to Ethics (posthumous, 1883).

89 Simon Laurie: Ethica, or the Ethics of Reason (1885). (A French translation by Georges Remack, 1902.)

90 James Seth: Study of Ethical Principles (3rd ed., 1894).

91 Josiah Royce: The Spirit of Modern Philosophy (1892); Religious Aspects of Philosophy (4th ed., 1892).

92 A. Fouillée: Critique des systèmes de morale contemporaine (1883); Evolutionisme des idées-forces (1890; German translation, 1908); La morale des idées-forces (1907).

93 Jean Marie Guyau: La morale anglaise contemporaine (1879); Esquisse d’une morale sans obligation ni sanction (1885); L’irreligion de l’avenir (1886). A German version of his works appeared in 6 vols. in 1912.

94 “Toute idée enveloppe un élément impulsif; nulle idée n’est un état simplement représentatif.” (Every idea contains an element of impulse; no idea is merely a condition of re-presenting something in thought.)

95 . . . “notre conscience de nous-même tendant à sa plénitude par son expansion en autrui.” ( . . . our consciousness of ourselves, which presses on to its full growth by expanding into others.)

96 “Agis envers les autres comme si tu avais conscience des autres en même temps que de soi.”

97 Fouillée reveals his attitude towards Nietzsche in a work entitled Nietzsche and Immoralism. Notes on the works of Fouillée and Guyau have been preserved by Nietzsche.

98 Eduard von Hartmann: Philosophy of the Unconscious (1869); Phenomenology of the Moral Consciousness (1879).

99 Phenomenology, p. 670.

100 Phenomenology, p. 700.

101 Henri Bergson: Sur les données immédiates de la conscience (1888). (English translation by F. L. Pogson, 1910: Time and Freewill; An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness.) Matière et memoire. Essai sur la relation du corps et de l’esprit (1896). (English translation by N. M. Paul and W. S. Palmer: Matter and Memory, 1911.) L’énvolution créatrice (1907). (English translation by A. Mitchell: Creative Evolution, 1911.)

102 H. S. Chamberlain: The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century (1899). (14th impression, 1922.) Immanuel Kant (1905); Goethe (1912).

103 Count Hermann Keyserling: The Structure of the World (1906); A Philosopher’s Travel-Diary (2 vols., 1919); Philosophy as Art (1920).

104 So Otto Braun in his essay “Monism and Ethics” in the volume entitled Monism Expounded in Contributions from its Representatives (edited by Arthur Drews; vol. i., 1908). The poverty of this ethic is clearly revealed when the editor tries to indicate its content.

CHAPTER XX Notes

105 This book dates from about the eleventh century A.D. It has been translated into English by James Legge (Sacred Books of the East, 1891) and by T. Susuki and P. Carus (Chicago, 1906); into French by M. A. Rémusat (Le livre des récompenses et des peines, 1816), and by Stanislas Julien (1835); into German by W. Schüler (Zeitschrift für Missionskunde, 1909).

“Be human with animals, and do no harm to insects, plants, and trees,” is the command of one saying in this book. The following acts are condemned: “Hunting men or animals to death; shooting with bow and arrow at birds; hunting quadrupeds; driving insects out of their holes; frightening birds which are asleep in the trees; blocking up the holes of insects, and destroying birds-nests.” To delight in hunting is described as a serious moral perversion.

INDEX