The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge Volume 10; Embracing Biblical, Historical, Doctrinal, and Practical Theology and Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Biography from the Earliest Times to the Present Day (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1911 Excerpt: ...and more scientific form by A. Twesten (Grundriss der philosophischen Elhik, 1841). Schleiermacher regarded ethics as the speculative science of reason, and as including the conceptual presentation of all influence of reason on nature so far as it falls within the sphere of human experience. In the widest sense it is the philosophy of history or of civilization, and is not imperative but descriptive. It is not limited to the practical, but finds activity of reason also in the acquisition of knowledge and the enrichment of the inner life. Ethics must, accordingly, describe the union of reason and nature through the agency of the former, its end being the realization of the union of reason and nature. The power through which reason works in nature is ethically termed virtue, and the mode in which virtue tends to produce ethical good is termed duty. Ethics can be adequately presented only by the combination of these three elements, but the most important is the doctrine of the good, which is summed up by the concept of the supreme good that includes all the products of the rational activity of man. The subject of the ethical process is man as a species; although a distinction may be drawn between individual and class morality, this difference is relative, since each person is at once both an individual and a member of the race. Again, the influence of reason on nature may be twofold: organizing, as making nature the tool, or symbolizing, as reproducing nature. The combination of the individual and class activity of reason with the organizing and symbolizing tendencies results in a fourfold form of moral activity, which is represented respectively by nation and State, family and society, school and Church. The theory of virtue and duty is discussed but briefly ...