Constructive Ethics, a Review of Modern Moral Philosophy in Its Three Stages of Interpretation, Criticism, and Reconstruction (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. 1886 Excerpt: ... an analytic relation. The Stoic3, for instance, thought that if Happiness were analysed it would be found to be at bottom nothing but Virtue; while the Epicureans, reversing the relation, supposed that an analysis of Virtue would lead to the discovery that it only meant Happiness. But such opinions are too paradoxical. It is impossible to bring Virtue and Happiness to a common denominator, for the two notions are too widely dissimilar. The real relation, then, must be a synthetic one; in other words, a relation of cause and effect. Either virtue must cause felicity, or a life of happiness must bring in its train a continuous pursuit of virtue. Alas experience gives the lie to each of these suppositions in turn. Virtuous we may be, now and again, but not, therefore, necessarily happy. Fragmentary glimpses of happiness may come within the range of our vision without making us thereby virtuous. A jarring discord seems to exist between the two elements in our summutn bonum, and the peacemaker cannot be found, at all events in the phenomenal sphere. But it is just the fact of this discord which makes it necessary for us to suppose a realm other than the phenomenal, to serve as the true home for morality. For reason craves an union of the two, and understanding assures us that in the world, as we know it, virtue and happiness fall asunder into irreconcilable antagonism. Yet if there be such a thing as morality for creatures like ourselves endowed with a sensitive frame, which craves, if not for enjoyment, at least for freedom from pain, there must be an inner home of the spirit--a super-sensuous sphere, or as Kant calls it a ' noumenal' sphere, where happiness is raised above the accident of circumstance, and virtue is secure from the incessant interruptions of...