The Good Life: An Introduction to Ethics [1st ed. 2023] 3476059685, 9783476059680

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The Good Life An Introduction to Ethics Wolfgang Pleger

The Good Life

Wolfgang Pleger

The Good Life An Introduction to Ethics With Contributions by Barbara Pleger

Wolfgang Pleger FB 2: Philologie/Kulturwissenschaften Universität Koblenz-Landau Koblenz, Germany

ISBN 978-3-476-05968-0 ISBN 978-3-476-05969-7  (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-05969-7 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer-Verlag GmbH, DE, part of Springer Nature 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer-Verlag GmbH, DE, part of Springer Nature. The registered company address is: Heidelberger Platz 3, 14197 Berlin, Germany

For Barbara

Contents

Introduction 1 I Ancient Ethics of Happiness 9 1 Dialogic Reason (Plato) 11 2 The Happiness of Theory (Aristotle) 19 3 The Tranquility of the Soul (Hellenistic Ethics) 28 II Faith and Reason—Philosophical Theological Ethics 39 1 The Beatitude in the Hereafter (Augustine) 40 2 Reason and Grace (Thomas von Aquin) 48 3 ‘Faith Alone’ (Luther/Kierkegaard) 54 III The Moral Sense—Ethics and Metaethics 67 1 “Moral Sense”—The Moral Sense (Hutcheson) 68 2 Reason and Feeling (Hume) 76 3 The Emotive Nature of Moral Judgments (Ayer/Stevenson) 83 IV Practical Reason—The Ethics of Duty 91 1 The Duties of the Person (Cicero) 92 2 The Categorical Imperative (Kant) 100 3 Freedom and Duty (Fichte) 108

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V Happiness and Utility—Utilitarianism 117 1 The Greatest Happiness of the Greatest Number (Bentham) 118 2 The Principle of Utility (Mill) 125 3 Cost-Benefit Analysis as a Calculus of Happiness (Singer) 133 VI Value Ethics 141 1 Life Itself—The Highest Value (Dewey) 142 2 The ‘Valuing’ (Scheler) 150 3 The Ideal Realm of Values (Hartmann) 157 VII The Development of Morals—Genetic Concepts of Ethics 167 1 The Evolution of Conscience (Darwin) 168 2 It, I and ‘Super-I’ (Freud) 176 3 The Moral Development of the Child (Piaget/Kohlberg) 183 VIII Education and Cultural Training—Pedagogical Ethics 193 1 Principles of a Natural Education (Rousseau) 194 2 Individual Education and Political Freedom (W. v. Humboldt) 206 3 The Fight for the Rights of the Child (Montessori) 216 IX Concepts of Radical Moral Criticism 227 1 The “Right of the Stronger” (Sophists) 228 2 Criticism of “Class Morality” (Marx/Engels) 236 3 Critique of the “Slave Morality” (Nietzsche) 244 X Between Ideology and Reason—On Political Ethics 253 1 Totalitarianism and Democracy (Arendt) 254 2 Global Capitalism and Welfare State (Hayek) 262 3 ‘Unleashed Technology’ and Ecology (Jonas) 272 XI Responsibility and Discourse Ethics 283 1 Ethics of Conviction and Responsibility Ethic (Weber) 284 2 Freedom and responsibility (Sartre) 292 3 Communicative reason and discourse (Apel/Habermas) 299 XII Ethics and Universal Human Rights 309 1 Pragmatic Freedom and Reasonable Identity in the Context of Ethics 310

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2 Freedom and Equality—On the Prehistory of the Declaration of Human Rights 317 3 The Declaration of Human Rights (1789/1948)—An Unfinished Project 323 References 339

Introduction

The physiological knowledge of man goes back to the study of what nature makes of man, the pragmatic, what he, as a free-acting being, makes of himself, or can and should make (Immanuel Kant).

The understanding of ethics is determined by two considerations, one historical and one systematic. On the one hand, ethics is to be understood as a philosophical discipline that was developed in classical Greek philosophy. Its topic is the question of the “good life”. It combines the pursuit of happiness with the claim of reason. With it, the framework is set within which all following ethical concepts will move (cf. Steinfath 2012). This becomes clear when one reflects on the systematic basis of ethics. It is located in anthropology. The corresponding thesis is: There is an intention in man, accompanying his whole life, for a “good life”. Nevertheless, its realization is not guaranteed by instincts, i.e. by nature. The reduction of instinct, the basis of world openness, gives man a scope of freedom. It enables him to make a conceptual determination of what a good life is to be understood at all. The range of its meanings is extremely wide. They include: the identification of the good life with pleasure as in hedonism, happiness in the sense of a comprehensive well-being, bliss in the hereafter and the moral feeling. They also include: the fulfillment of duty according to the imperatives of practical reason, the greatest benefit for the greatest number of people, the realization of ideal values and finally acting © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer-Verlag GmbH, DE, part of Springer Nature 2023 W. Pleger, The Good Life, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-05969-7_1

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according to the principle of responsibility. However, the orientation to the good life is the bracket that connects these very different ethical concepts. But the scope of freedom does not only extend to the conceptual determination of the good life, but also to the choice of means to achieve it or to live according to it. Basically, it is a question of determining human action by which the good life can and should be realized. But this action is interpreted differently. It happens, for example, in accordance with nature or precisely contrary to natural inclinations; it is understood as a given condition with the existence of man from the very beginning or as a developing human competence. In any case, however, acting, in contrast to behavior that can be described biologically, is inextricably linked to freedom. But precisely because of freedom, acting becomes a fundamental problem for humans. This not only affects the choice of the appropriate means for given action goals, but also the goals themselves. In any case, the human being must choose between possible goals and means, decide in favor of one and reject the other. The action for which he has decided, he can and must attribute to himself. He is the author of his actions and is therefore responsible for them, including their foreseeable consequences. Freedom as a condition of acting is inextricably linked to responsibility. This concept of responsibility is therefore not only a characteristic of responsibility ethics, but determines every type of action in every concept of ethics. This leads to fundamental considerations of the understanding of ethics: Only the one who is free is responsible, while responsibility, on the other hand, requires freedom (cf. Quante 2013, 165). However, with responsibility the question arises as to the instance before which someone has to answer. In the history of ethics, various possibilities have been represented. In monotheistic religions, God is the last instance before which the human being has to answer alone. In modern times, this instance has shifted into the interior of the human being and has become conscience (cf. Picht 1969, 320). Although there is the demand to examine one’s own conscience, the result of this examination is an immediate certainty that cannot be questioned by anything or anyone. However, already Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel has pointed out that this certainty is problematic; because it claims general moral correctness for itself (cf. Hegel 1970, 261). But conscience can not argumentatively defend the universality of its claim. As decisive for responsibility, therefore, only an instance can be accepted that fulfills the claim of universality. This instance is reason, which, like freedom and responsibility, is a size that transcends and connects ethical concepts. Responsible action is linked

Introduction     3

to the willingness to be able to justify one’s own decision with reasonable arguments. A pragmatic power of judgment is necessary for this, which is able to relate the claim of reason to the concrete situation of action. This remains difficult enough and is controversial in individual cases. Nevertheless, the rationality of an action lies in the fact that the person acting must be able to justify his action by pointing out that anyone else in his situation could have acted in the same way, who acknowledges the claim of reason. Freedom, responsibility and reason condition each other. Without freedom there is no responsibility and without reason no universally binding instance for responsible action. This connection forms a decisive prerequisite for the realization of a good life. The following are the most important concepts of ethics, which were developed primarily in European history, to be presented. The approach is historical-systematic. Each concept is represented by three or four authors. Completeness is not sought. Each of the presented authors brings the respective concept to expression in a particularly concise way. The presentation follows a hermeneutic approach. It is important to let the author speak in his individual way of thinking and speaking. This is also done by giving quotes a appropriate place. Each section begins with a longer quote that brings the central thoughts of the author’s ethics to the fore. Notes on this quote are made by: (see quote). Notes on specific sections within the book are made by giving chapter and section, e.g. (see Chap. II, 3) for ‘see second chapter, third section’. Not only philosophical positions, but also theological, biological, psychological, pedagogical, sociological, economic and political positions are presented. The approach, even though the focus is on philosophy, is interdisciplinary. Chapter one deals with ancient ethics of happiness. It is important to make clear that the ancient concept of happiness is not—like the modern one—to be understood as a feeling, but as a well-being in the comprehensive sense, which is the result of a reasonable life practice. For Plato happiness, the eudaimonia, is guaranteed by a life under the rule of reason. Aristotle distinguishes three ways of life: the life of pleasure, political practice and theory. Only the last one, which is oriented towards the permanent, unchangeable, eternal, promises lasting happiness. Hellenism includes the positions of Epicurus, Stoicism and Skepticism. All three agree that happiness is a state of mind that is the result of philosophical insight and practice. Epicurus sees happiness in the liberation from pain and fear. For Seneca and Epictetus it arises through the ability of humans to distance themselves from the unchangeable things of the external world, and for Sextus Empiricus the state of mind is the result of a suspension of judgment.

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The second chapter deals with the philosophical-theological ethics, which resulted from the merger of ancient and Christian thought and dominated in the Middle Ages. It is characterized in that their religious content was related to ancient philosophical content. Christian ethics of the Middle Ages deals with the tension between faith and reason (fides et ratio). Undoubtedly, the emphasis is on faith; but this includes rational grounds either or limits itself from these. While Augustine sees the Stoic philosophical ethics as failed and the happiness—mediated by faith—in the hereafter, Thomas Aquinas tries to reconcile reason and faith following Aristotle. Luther finally radicalizes the position of Augustine and distrusts reason. He despairs like Kierkegaard of all his efforts to avoid sin, and sees the salvation of man solely in faith (sola fide). The third chapter discusses ethical considerations that are at home in English thought. It is the concept of moral sense. The basis of ethics is a moral feeling that is found in all people. It is developed by thinkers like Anthony Ashley Cooper Shaftesbury and Francis Hutcheson. In contrast to the egoistic approaches of Thomas Hobbes and Bernard de Mandeville Hutcheson advocates the view that there is an incorruptible sense of morality in man, whose feature is the goodwill (benevolence) towards other people. Also David Hume follows this approach. He points out that the mind is indeed suitable for the assessment of actions, but does not have the power to carry them out. With Alfred Jules Ayer and Charles Leslie Stevenson, thinkers of the twentieth century, the concept of an emotive ethics is connected with the idea of a metaethics. The task of the philosopher is not to make moral judgments, but to analyze them. The fourth chapter deals with duty ethics. Its origins are in Stoic ethics. In his work De officiis (On Duties) Cicero combines recommendations for individual conduct with political considerations. He resolves the conflict between natural inclination and duty serving the common good by pointing out that in the long run orientation towards duty also serves one’s own interests. Kant has rejected this mediation in his duty ethics and only called that action moral which is oriented towards the categorical imperative and takes place completely independent of natural motives. The fulfillment of the natural striving for happiness can only take place in the afterlife for him. Johann Gottlieb Fichte radicalizes the Kantian approach and interprets the categorical imperative as the duty of the human being to realize a reasonable world order. The topic of the fifth chapter has its center again in Anglo-Saxon thought. It is about the approach of utilitarianism. The founder Jeremy Bentham, who builds on the ancient concept of the ethics of happiness, sees the

Introduction     5

principle of his ethics in the ‘greatest happiness of the greatest number of people’. As a lawyer, he also tried to make this principle the basis for a reform of criminal law. Also John Stuart Mill, who like his father was a student of Bentham, combined the utilitarian ethic with political and social reformist thoughts. He became known through his work On Liberty, which became a standard work of political literature. In his ethics he tries—similarly to Cicero—to show that the observance of moral rules is more useful in the long run than the perception of an immediate advantage. The Australian philosopher Peter Singer, who has also made a name for himself as an animal rights activist, radicalizes the utilitarian approach in such a way that, in order to increase the total amount of happiness, he is also willing to recommend the killing of disabled infants (infanticide) in cases of mental or physical disability. The sixth chapter is about the ethics of values. If the term ‘value’ originally belongs to the thinking of economics, then the concept of a value philosophy becomes a central term of philosophy at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the twentieth century. Meanwhile, it has largely disappeared from it again. It remained a “philosophical episode” (HWP, vol. 12, p. 614). Nevertheless, it is still used in the field of education (‘value education’), cultural theory (‘value change’) and politics (‘value community’). Therefore, it makes sense to introduce the most important representatives of a value ethics. Among them is the American pragmatist John Dewey. For him, the values are anchored in the nature of man himself. Similarly, Max Scheler argues, who, in contrast to the formal ethics of Kant, which he considers to be merely formal, tries to establish a ‘material value ethics’. The basis of this ethics is a ‘value feeling’. Nicolai Hartmann gives a slightly different twist to his ethics. He locates the values in an “ideal realm of values”. The values apply even if individual people do not yet recognize them due to a lack of understanding. The seventh chapter deals with genetic concepts of ethics, and this in two respects: on the one hand from an evolutionary and on the other hand from a developmental psychological perspective. For evolutionary theory, Charles Darwin is exemplary. For him, morality develops from a “social instinct” that is also found in animals. In addition, humans are characterized by conscience, which, according to Darwin, “can be referred to as a moral being with certainty”. For Sigmund Freud too, the development of conscience plays an important role, but from a developmental psychological point of view. The commands and prohibitions of the parents create an super-ego in the child, which is internalized and thus becomes conscience. The moral development of the child is empirically based on the work of Jean Piaget

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and Lawrence Kohlberg. For them, the child goes through specific stages of moral development. The eighth chapter is dedicated to education and training from the perspective of a pedagogical ethics. Due to the special position of man in nature, which is characterized by the fact that he lacks natural instincts and a fixed repertoire of behavior, he is dependent on education. The methods of education are discussed in pedagogy. However, the question is which ethical principles lie at its foundation. Based on his social criticism, Rousseau wants to enable his pupil to develop his natural forces through a natural education in order to come closer to the ideal of humanity in this way. Wilhelm von Humboldt also places the development of the individual human powers at the center of his educational-theoretical considerations, which also guided him in the reform of the school system and the founding of the University of Berlin. Maria Montessori devoted her pedagogy to the fight for the rights of the child, which have so far been too little recognized. Her thesis is: Just as the adult provides for the production of external means of subsistence through work, so the child only works and educates the adult. In this work, the adult has to help the child. The ninth chapter is dedicated to concepts of a radical moral criticism. The beginning is made by the ancient Sophists, whose moral attitude is quite different. Some of them emphasize the equality of all human beings, others the “right of the stronger”. These include Thrasymachos and Kallikles, both of which appear in platonic dialogues. They criticize the prevailing valid law, which was created by the many weak and in the interest of the weak, while the naturally valid law of the strong is suppressed. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels criticize the morality of the ruling bourgeois class, which, however, is a minority in relation to the proletariat. Only after the revolutionary abolition of classes is a general human morality possible, in which the individual human powers can develop freely. Friedrich Nietzsche concludes his moral criticism again with the Sophists. The prevailing morality, which he criticizes, is a “slave morality” that developed in Europe through the spread of Christianity. The loudly professed Christian love of neighbor is, in his opinion, actually full of resentment against the strong and “noble” people. Therefore, he pleads for the Renaissance of an ancient, aristocratic “master morality”. However, it is noteworthy that in all three variants of moral criticism, it is not morality itself that is rejected, but only the “prevailing” one is to be replaced by a better one. Chapter ten discusses problems of a political ethic in the tension between ideology and reason. The beginning is formed by the considerations of Hannah Arendt, who, starting from the totalitarian movements of the

Introduction     7

twentieth century, distinguishes totalitarianism as an encompassing ideology from the historically traditional forms of dictatorship. Total domination is not content with the suppression of citizens in political terms, it is “totalitarian”, i.e. it affects all, also the private, areas of life, and despises political freedom, democracy and human rights. The second section deals with economic liberalism, the ideological features of which are already audible with Adam Smith. A current representative is Friedrich A. von Hayek, who tries to defend the freedom of the entrepreneur vis-à-vis an allegedly expanding “welfare state”. The topic of the third section is the responsibility of man towards nature. With it, the traditional framework of ethics, which so far mainly concerned interpersonal action, is extended by the dimension of the non-human nature. Technology, which instead of serving the necessary mediation between man and nature leads to a ruthless domination and destruction of nature, takes on the character of an ideology. In contrast, Hans Jonas attributes a “dignity” of its own to nature. It forms the central motif of his ethic of responsibility. Chapter eleven deals with the ethics of responsibility and the discourse ethic. The opening is formed by the sociologist Max Weber, who, with his distinction between ethics of conviction and ethics of responsibility, brought the latter into the social, political and philosophical discourse. While the ethicist of conviction is oriented towards principles, the ethicist of responsibility also takes into account the foreseeable consequences of his actions. For Jean-Paul Sartre there is an insoluble connection between freedom and responsibility. Because man is free, he is also responsible for all his actions. He must justify them to all other men, finally to all mankind, and in this way he must be able to justify himself. Karl-Otto Apel and Jürgen Habermas have made the linguistic aspect of responsibility the basis of their communication and discourse ethic. If certain claims to validity are already presupposed in everyday communication, they are problematized in the context of a discourse ethic. The goal of the discourse is their review in a situation that anticipates an “ideal speech situation”. In Chap. XII, the relationship between ethics and universal human rights is finally addressed. For a reason-oriented ethics, the freedom of the person and their intention to achieve a reasonable identity have a central importance. However, this can only achieve its goal under the condition of recognized human rights. Ethics and human rights are closely related. Human rights cannot be invoked in contrast to the laws of a state, the positive law (see Horster 2005, 117 f.). They have the character of ethical norms. This is made clear by a look at the history of the declaration of human rights as well as the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789 and

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the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the UN of 1948. With them there is now a generally recognized standard to name human rights violations. In the current age of technology, new challenges arise that affect all of humanity. They show that human rights are an unfinished project. References are made to individual passages that I have taken from my Handbook of Anthropology (see Pleger 2018) in the relevant section.

I Ancient Ethics of Happiness

Ancient ethics is a ethics of happiness. The Greek word for happiness is: eudaimonia and means, according to the meaning of the word, that in the happy person a ‘good spirit’ lives. But in fact the word has a great range of meanings. These include: ‘happiness’, ‘bliss’, ‘happy state’, ‘blessing’, ‘well-being’, ‘prosperity’ and finally ‘power’. It does not by any means only mean the specific state of mind, but a well-being in the comprehensive sense of the word, which of course also includes a certain prosperity. The beggar who is dependent on the charity of others cannot be happy. On the other hand, mere wealth does not by any means guarantee happiness, as the conversation between the rich Croesus and Solon reported by Herodotus (Herodotus n. d., I, 32) shows. The more precise definition of happiness is the subject of the ancient evidence on this topic. The beginning of ethical considerations is the epics of Homer (around 750 BC), whose work contains a kind of ‘ethics of nobility’ (cf. MacIntyre 1995, p. 13). Homer describes the behaviour and the constitution that distinguish a member of the nobility in a positive and negative sense. The term pair used by him is agathos and kakos, which would be translated into German as ‘good’ and ‘bad’. The word agathos means ‘brave’, ‘of great reputation’, i.e. ‘royal’, but also ‘successful’ and ‘clever’; accordingly kakos: ‘of low origin’, ‘cowardly’ and ‘mean’. The good, i.e. noble man has a certain arete, a word that could best be translated as ‘competence’. These include ‘skill’, ‘cunning’ and ‘bravery’, but finally also justice (dikaiosyne). The competence of a person is threatened by ‘hybris’, which is to be understood as ‘arbitrariness’, ‘pride’ and ‘arrogance’. The core meaning of the word ‘hybris’ is to © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer-Verlag GmbH, DE, part of Springer Nature 2023 W. Pleger, The Good Life, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-05969-7_2

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be seen in an excess, i.e. in exceeding the measure due to man as a mortal being. The warning against ‘hybris’ and the recommendation to observe moderation is a recurring theme of the so-called ‘seven sages’. Some of the proverbs attributed to them are: “Keep measure!” (Thales), “Nothing to excess!” (Solon), “Moderation is best!” (Cleobulus), “Conquer anger!” (Chilon), “Gain is insatiable.” (Pittacus), “Be neither too soft nor too harsh!” (Bias) and “In prosperity be moderate, in adversity be prudent!” (Periander) (see Capelle 1968, pp. 65 ff.). The measure assigned to man has a divine origin and not only determines his own behaviour, but also that of the community. The law (nomos) valid in the polis is therefore not arbitrary and not changeable. However, this conviction became fragile when the Greeks became acquainted with the customs and laws of non-Greek countries as a result of their extensive travels and trade relations. Herodotus, who travelled to many of these countries, bore witness to this. As a result, the unquestionable validity of one’s own laws came into question. The question then arose as to whether the laws might not have a divine claim, but would be merely human agreements. It was the Sophists who raised this question with all urgency. The most important of them was Protagoras, who called into question the divine origin of measure and declared man to be the measure of all things. The novelty was that human laws, i.e. the nomos valid in a polis, were now related to the physis, i.e. to nature. Nature became the new universally binding point of orientation, while human laws were abolished and relativized in their absolute validity. In this crisis of traditional polysituationality, the thinking of philosophy arises. In confrontation with the Sophists, Socrates develops his specific form of truth-seeking. The method he developed is dialogue. For him too, the traditional myth as the basis of polysituationality has lost its binding force; but he does not put forward dogmatic assertions in its place, but rather tries to answer the question of ethical standards anew in conversation (cf. Pleger 1998). The guiding principle for him is the maxim of self-knowledge and the “concern for the soul”. It is precisely here that Plato picks up with his considerations on anthropology and ethics. They not only lead him to a new definition of the relationship between body and soul, but also to a new interpretation of the legal order of the polis. The guiding principle for him in determining happiness is a dialogical reason, which, practised as the method of “distinction” (dihairesis) and “contemplation” (synopsis), becomes dialectic. This approach has theoretical and practical significance. Plato thus justifies the concept of a dialectical ethics (cf. Gadamer 1985 V, 3).

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With Aristotle ethics first appears as the title of a philosophical discipline (Politics 1280 a; 1282 b). There are even three ethical works by him: The Eudemian Ethics, the so-called Magna Moralia and finally the Nicomachean Ethics, which shows his approach in the most mature form. The range of ethical issues he discusses is wide. It ranges from the determination of the right measure to the questions of freedom, justice and friendship to the question of choosing the lifestyle that promises the highest happiness. Ethics in the Hellenistic period includes Epicureanism, Stoicism and academic scepticism. While Epicurus is considered to be a hedonist oriented towards the pleasure principle, in fact he only has the liberation from fear and suffering as his goal, Stoicism, to which, for example, Seneca and Epictetus belong, is oriented towards the concept of inner peace. Sextus Empiricus sees in scepticism a method of achieving a state of equilibrium of the soul through suspension of judgement (epoché). They all determine happiness as inner peace.

1 Dialogic Reason (Plato) “Come here, Protagoras! Reveal to me from your attitude also this, what you think of knowledge, whether you think like most people or differently? Most people think of knowledge approximately like this, that it is not something strong, leading and ruling, and they do not value it as such at all, but that often, even when knowledge is in a person, it does not rule him, but rather something else, sometimes anger, sometimes desire, sometimes aversion, sometimes love, often also fear, so that they obviously think of knowledge like of a miserable wretch, that it gets pulled around by everything else. Does it seem to you like this or rather, that it is something beautiful, which well rules a person? And if someone has recognized good and bad, will he be forced by nothing else to do anything else, than what his knowledge commands him, but that the correct insight [phronesis] is strong enough to help the person through?”– So it seems to me, he answered, as you say now, Socrates, and moreover it would be, if it were appropriate for anyone else, certainly also for me, to claim that wisdom and knowledge were not the most powerful among all human things.– Well said by you, I said, and very true.” (Plato: Protagoras In: Plato. Works in eight volumes. Vol. 1. Edited by G. Eigler. Darmstadt 1973, 352 b–d)

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Plato is born in 428/27 BC in Athens. Since 407 BC he has been a pupil of Socrates. After his execution in 399 he goes to Megara to Euclid and studies mathematics. In 389 he travels to Syracuse, perhaps also to Egypt and Cyrene. In Italy he meets the Pythagorean Archytas of Tarentum. In 387 he founded the Academy in a grove outside Athens. In 367 and 361 he makes two more trips to Sicily, during which he unsuccessfully tries to convince the tyrants Dionysius I and II of the plan of a state founded on philosophical principles. He dies in 347 BC in Athens. Plato’s lifetime falls into a time when Athens is plagued by political crises, wars and epidemics. It is a time of dissolution of traditional custom and decline of the polis. The intellectual situation of the time is determined by the appearance of the Sophists, who not only question the myth, but also the traditional legal order of the polis. The situation in Athens deteriorates due to the Peloponnesian War (431–404) between Athens and Sparta, during which there are several political coups. Tyranny and democracy alternate rapidly. One of the last episodes of this fateful history is the reign of terror of the ‘Thirty’ in 404, who sentenced more than 1500 citizens to death. Finally, a group of Athenian exiles and emigrants led by Thrasybulus succeeds in freeing Athens in 403 and re-establishing democracy. However, the time of their rule also includes the trial and conviction of Socrates. For Plato, the conviction of Socrates, whom he calls “my dear older friend” in his Seventh Letter and whom he “does not hesitate to call the most just of his time” (324 e), becomes the criterion for judging the political conditions of his time. His verdict is devastating. Athens is in the hands of either unscrupulous tyrants or skilled demagogues who are able to manipulate democracy to their own advantage. The rule of law is, in his opinion, only to be achieved if those in power seriously commit themselves to the principles of justice. But first and foremost, this requires a determination of the nature of justice, and this is—in his conviction—a matter for philosophy. Plato develops this thought in his Seventh Letter as follows: “Therefore, the generations of men will not be delivered from misery before either the class of those who philosophize in the right and true way comes to power in the cities, or those in power in the cities begin to philosophize truly by divine providence” (326 a/b). Plato refused to take on a political office, but rather reflected philosophically on the ethical conditions of the principle of justice. Ethics is therefore a central theme of his philosophy. The starting point and model for his philosophy is the person and thought of Socrates. The specific approach of Socrates is to have brought the dialogue to the fore as a philosophical method. This is the consistent testimony of all historical sources (cf. Pleger 1998, 79).

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Plato took up the dialogical method and made it the form of presentation of his philosophy, which is ‘dialectical’ in this sense. The spokesman is Socrates in most cases. In particular, the early dialogues may be understood in large parts as authentic testimony of Socrates’ thinking. For the characterization of Socrates’ ethics, which is probably also that of early Plato, the argumentation of the dialogues Euthyphron and Protagoras may be presented as an example. The topics are the question of piety and the teachability of political competence. The dialogue Euthyphron is of central importance for the historical Socrates, because it makes clear to what extent he agrees with what has been called the Sophistic Enlightenment. The topic is the question of the binding nature of the myth. As in many dialogues, there is also a concrete situation, i.e. persons, place and time, which motivate the topic of the dialogue for this one. Here, the situation is characterized by the fact that Socrates meets the priest Euthyphron in front of the courthouse. The topic is quickly found. It is about two processes. The one is conducted by Euthyphron against his father, who threw a day laborer who killed a servant in a quarrel into a pit, where he died after some time. The other process is the one initiated by Meletos against Socrates. Euthyphron is, despite the objections of some relatives, convinced that he is doing the right thing, because, in contrast to them, he claims to know “how the divine relates to what is pious and impious” (4 e). His decisive argument is based on the myth. It reads: It is quite justified to accuse one’s own father, because after all Zeus also imprisoned his father. Socrates’ answer to this argument goes in two directions. On the one hand, he points out that orientation towards the will of the gods becomes questionable if the gods themselves are in dispute, on the other hand, however, it is not enough to merely give an example of a pious act without saying what the “idea” (6 e) of the pious and that of the impious is. Euthyphrons answer is: “What is therefore pleasing to the gods is pious; what is not pleasing, impious” (6 e). However, if—as Socrates—the gods themselves are in dispute, and certainly not over trifles, but only over such important things as justice and injustice, good and evil, etc., then it is possible that what is pleasing to one god is impious to the other and vice versa. How is an orientation then possible? And Euthyphron’s answer that all gods agree that a person who has unjustly killed another deserves punishment does not help, since it is precisely about determining what justice is. In addition, there is the further decisive question of “whether the pious is loved by the gods because it is pious, or whether it is pious because it is loved?” (10 a). Euthyphron fails at this question. Finally, he accepts Socrates’

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thesis: The pious is loved by the gods because it is pious. Against this, he answers the next question of whether the pious and the just are identical or whether the pious is only a part of justice, as follows: The pious is the part of justice that relates to the treatment of the gods, the other part of justice relates to the behavior of people towards each other (cf. 12 e). However, he understands the treatment of the gods as a kind of service, as servants would have to render towards their master. Towards the gods they would exist in prayers and in sacrificial acts. These are pleasing and agreeable to the gods. The treatment of the gods is therefore—as Socrates—a kind of business, in which people ask the gods for something and sacrifice something to them in return, which is pleasing and agreeable to them. With this, Euthyphron is back at the already abandoned thesis that the pious is what is pleasing to the gods. When he is pointed out by Socrates, he gives up and ends the conversation. He did not understand the urgency of his concession that it is not what is dear to the gods that is pious, but only what is loved by the gods that is pious. It is a question of nothing less than the reasonable justification of the pious, or more generally of the just, which Socrates brings to light. In contrast to this is the submission of the pious to the irrational will of the gods advocated by Euthyphro. But if the pious and the just are to be justified reasonably, then humans and gods are subject to reason; then reason provides orientation for human action and not myth with its contradictory and unreasonable stories. This does not mean that Socrates or Plato were atheists, as for example the Sophist Critias, but rather that they were convinced that the divine may not contradict reason. The decisive factor in this dialogue is the development of a philosophical way of thinking and living. Reason becomes the guideline for Socrates’ and Plato’s thinking and acting. They represent it vis-à-vis myth as well as vis-à-vis political demagoguery. For Plato it becomes the basis of his ethics. Aristotle, who was a student in Plato’s Academy for many years and studied Plato’s and his predecessors’ writings during these years, described the appearance and the dialogical approach of Socrates with great philosophical understanding. Although he could not get to know Socrates personally for biographical reasons, his statements about him are an important source. In his Metaphysics he comments on the Socratic method as follows: “Now at that time Socrates was concerned with the moral virtues and first sought general concepts about them; […] There are two things which can rightly be ascribed to Socrates: the inductive proofs [epaktikoí lógoi] and the general definitions [horízesthai kathólou]; both of these proceed from the principle of science” (1078 b 17–30). By inductive proof Aristotle understands the

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method by which one arrives at a general concept and a definition starting from individual examples and increasing generalizations. In the Platonic dialogues this usually happens because, conditioned by a situation from everyday life, an example is already taken too early as the basis for a definition. In the dialogue it then becomes clear that the one mentioned case cannot stand for all cases and that therefore a more general level must be entered. The essence of the matter or the knowledge of the matter in the general is inquired. Even though many “Socratic dialogues” end in aporia, we can attribute some specific ethical convictions to the historical Socrates. One of these is his thesis that everyone wants the good and therefore no one does the wrong thing voluntarily. Socrates develops this thesis in conversation with the Sophist Protagoras, to whom Plato dedicated his own dialogue. The topic of the dialogue Protagoras is the question of the teachability of political skills (“virtues”). Protagoras (ca. 485–ca. 415), who can be called the most important of the Sophists of this time, appeared as a wandering teacher and conveyed his knowledge against money to the politically aspiring youth. His curriculum included economics, politics and rhetoric. Socrates doubts that these skills are teachable. However, he agrees with Protagoras that knowledge plays a decisive role in action. He explains this thesis as follows: “At least I believe this, that no wise man thinks that any man fails from free choice or does anything bad and evil from free choice, but they know well that all those who do evil and bad things do them involuntarily” (345 d/e). It must therefore be shown that all bad actions have their cause in the lack of knowledge of the actor. However, this requires the conviction that knowledge is a guiding force for action. But this is denied by very many people. Rather, they hold the opinion that man, despite better knowledge, “overcome by desire” does something bad. Cognition and knowledge are rather too weak in relation to feelings and passions to prevail (cf. quotation). Remarkably, Protagoras agrees with Socrates that the opinion of the people is groundless and that in truth the “right insight” (phronesis) is strong enough to “help the man through” (352 c). The common task is therefore to justify the correctness of this thesis. Socrates leads the proof with the consent of Protagoras. The starting point is the thesis: ‘Desire is good and aversion is bad’ (cf. 354c). But if desire is the good, the word ‘desire’ in the sentence ‘He does the bad from being overcome by desire’ can be replaced by the word ‘the good’. This results in the paradoxical sentence: ‘He does the bad from being overcome by the good’ (cf. 355 c). The paradox is solved when it is recognized that occasionally a desire can lead to a greater aversion and thus to a greater evil. Conversely, however, an aversion

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can occasionally, for example a painful medical treatment, be followed by a greater desire, such as health. It is therefore not decisive to pay attention to the immediate desire or aversion, but to the overall balance of desire or aversion. The person who, “overcome by desire,” does evil, comes to his false judgment because he does not set the present pleasure or displeasure in the right proportion to the greater pleasure or displeasure that follows. He falls victim to a perspective distortion that can also be observed when looking: “So the same size appears larger to your face from close up, but smaller from a distance” (356 c). In the same way, the present pleasure is overestimated in relation to the later displeasure. In order to correct this optical illusion, a measuring art (metretiké techné, 356 d) is required that correctly assesses the true size ratios. The one who has this measuring art will no longer “overcome by desire” and do evil. The result of the joint considerations is the insight put forward by Socrates that “the welfare of our lives depends on the correct choice of pleasure and displeasure” (357a). Plato has adopted the Socrates thesis of the importance of knowledge for ethics and at the same time more precisely determined the character of this knowledge. Knowledge acquires a guiding character when it is an insight (phronesis ). This is more than just a mere knowledge of facts, but it changes the character of the person. It is an expression of dialectical reason. But after his meeting with the Pythagorean Archytas of Tarentum in southern Italy, Plato’s anthropological and ethical concepts changed. Plato adopted the idea of the soul’s rebirth. This developed a new understanding of the relationship between body and soul. They enter into opposition to each other. This has ethical consequences. The body does not simply follow the insight located in the soul, but tries to draw it to its side. Although the soul is basically able to control the body; but occasionally it also agrees with the intentions of the body. In his dialogue Phaedo, in which Plato Socrates has arguments for the immortality of the soul put forward on his last day of life, he develops the idea that for the way of life of a person and for the further fate of the soul after death it is decisive that the soul “keeps itself pure” and does not connect with the bodily. However, the soul, which “separates from the body, stained and impure, because it always deals with the body and has cared for and loved it” (81b), will be forced after death “to wander around, suffering punishment for its previous way of life, which was bad” (81d). The ethical consequence is therefore the admonition to already practice in one’s lifetime to keep oneself away from all bodily things and to devote oneself entirely to thinking, i.e. to philosophize. The hostility to the body reaches its peak in this dialogue. It has significantly influenced

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Christian ethics. But this concept is not Plato’s last word on the relationship between anthropology and ethics. In his most comprehensive work, the Politeia, Plato arrives at new anthropological and ethical insights. The starting question is the problem of justice. The first book, which contains a dispute with the Sophist Thrasymachus (see Chap. IX, 1), ends with the Socratic thesis: “The just man is happy and the unjust man is unhappy” (354 a). But against this thesis Glaucon raises an objection. He claims that people only act justly because they are afraid of punishment. If someone could act undetected, he would prefer injustice. This means that “one does not have to be just, but one wants to seem” (362 a). In order to refute this thesis, Socrates goes far out. In order to be able to look at the nature of justice more closely, he suggests an analogy. There would be justice in the individual human being, but also in a whole city. Wouldn’t it therefore be sensible to examine the role of justice on a larger scale in the city and then transfer the result to the individual human being? This analogy is accepted. So Socrates “thinks up a city” (369 a). The motivation for the foundation of a city is the satisfaction of elementary needs, such as food, clothing, housing. In order to satisfy these needs, specialized professions develop. The city therefore offers the possibility of mutual satisfaction of needs. The system of need satisfaction also includes trade and the invention of money as a convenient means of payment. However, in order to satisfy not only elementary, but also needs for luxury goods, pastures and arable land must be conquered, and for this it is necessary to build “a whole army”. The fully developed city therefore comprises three classes: the leading politicians, the class of soldiers and the class of craftsmen and merchants. Each class has a specific virtue. The ruling politicians must have wisdom (sophia). It is to be understood as a well-advisedness (euboulia). The soldiers must have courage (andreia). Finally, both for the rulers and for the ruled, moderation (sophrosyne), i.e. the ability to control one’s desires, i.e. oneself, is necessary. Justice is lacking. Of justice—so Socrates—was already unspoken the whole time. It consists in the fact that everyone fulfills the task corresponding to his nature in the state, i.e. that everyone does his own (433 a). To achieve justice in the state is the goal of a practically become dialectical reason. The question now is whether the model of the state can also be transferred to the individual person. This is the case if there are also three instances in the soul of the individual person that correspond to those of the state. And that is the case. The rank of the rulers corresponds to reason, i.e. the power of thought (logistikon), the rank of the soldiers to the “irascible” (thymos)

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and the rank of the merchants to the power of desire (epithymia). But how can one recognize that there are these three parts of the soul? Well, by the fact that there are situations in which the three parts fight each other. Plato names as an example of a conflict the desire of a person to look at the publicly displayed corpses of those executed. But his thymos, which not only comprises the ‘irascible’, but also decency, opposes this. Finally, however, “overcome by desire”, he says to his eyes: “There you have it, you wretches, feast your eyes on the beautiful sight!” (440 a). Other conflicts are conceivable. A life in which reason rules, the thymos follows reason like the dog follows the shepherd, and the desires are controlled by the thymos, like the sheep by the shepherd’s dog, is good (cf. 440 d). Just as in the state, justice in the individual person is now seen in the fact that each part of the soul in the person fulfills its task. If this succeeds, there is harmony (443 d) of the soul. Injustice, on the other hand, is discord and strife in the soul itself. The happiness of the human being is based on this harmony of the soul. Therefore, only the just person is happy and the thesis that the unjust person would be happy as long as he could remain undetected, is refuted. Compared to the Phaidon, Plato has made a decisive modification to his ethical considerations here. On the one hand, the dualism of body and soul has been replaced by the model of a three-part soul, i.e. parts of the soul fight each other, not body and soul anymore; on the other hand, the goal is no longer to avoid physical needs, but to give them a appropriate place in the soul. The rule of dialectical reason consists in establishing a just balance between conflicting parts of the soul. The idea of the rule of reason also forms the guideline for Plato’s political ethics. His thesis is: The best rule in the state is the rule of the best. If there is one, it is a monarchy, if there are several, an aristocracy. In both cases it is a rule of reason. But this rule cannot be maintained in the long run; because, according to Homer, “all that comes into being is destined for destruction” (546 a). So the aristocracy is followed by the timocracy, in which a warrior caste rules. It is followed by the oligarchy, the rule of the rich, followed by the democracy of the rule of the poor. The catastrophic end is the tyranny. Plato assigns soul parts to the state forms according to the following scheme: State forms

Soul parts

Monarchy/Aristocracy Timocracy Oligarchy Democracy Tyranny

Reason (logistikon) The mutable (thymos) Controlled desire (epithymia) Unrestrained desire (epithymia) Violent desire (epithymia)

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The rule of reason and violent desire form the absolute opposition of good and evil for Plato in the state as well as in the individual human being. In individual people, the idea of a dialectical reason is combined with the decision for their own way of life. Plato addresses this issue at the end of the Politeia in the myth of the choice of the ‘lifeless’. The doctrine of the reincarnation of souls lies at its core. According to the myth, before reincarnation—the souls are given the opportunity to choose from a large number of ways of life. This forms their “lifeless”. It is the “demon” they choose. The message of Lachesis, the daughter of “necessity”, goes to them: “It is not the demon that will save you, but you will choose the demon. But whoever has drawn first, let him choose the path of life first, in which he will then necessarily remain. Virtue is masterless, of which, according to how each honors or despises it, he will also have more or less. The guilt is of the chooser; God is guiltless” (617 d/e). The Platonic Socrates demythologizes the belief in destiny by dressing the thought of the freedom and necessity of man, his “way of life […] to choose”, in a myth himself. The history of Plato’s impact is unmissable. It largely coincides with the history of philosophy. His dialog-oriented dialectical ethics has undergone a remarkable transformation and update in the present in the by Apel and Habermas developed communication and discourse ethics (see Chap. XI, 3).

2 The Happiness of Theory (Aristotle) “If, then, among the virtuous actions those that concern state and war are at the top in terms of beauty and greatness, and yet they are incompatible with leisure and directed towards a goal outside of them, so they are not desired for their own sake, and if, on the other hand, the contemplative activity of the mind seems to excel in earnestness, and has no other purpose than itself, also includes a peculiar pleasure that increases the activity, as much as possible, that is, the self-sufficiency, the leisure, the freedom from fatigue and everything else that is attributed to the blessed, will be found in this activity. So this would be the perfect happiness of man, if it also lasted the full length of a life. For nothing that belongs to happiness may be imperfect. But such a life is higher than it is due to man as man, for he cannot live like this, insofar as he is a man, but only insofar as he has something divine in himself. […] If the mind is divine in comparison to man, then the life according to the mind must be divine in comparison to human life. But we should not listen to the admonition that tells us to think only human as humans and mortal as mortals, but as far as possible, we should

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strive to be immortal and do everything to live according to the best that is in us.” (Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics. Trans. and ed. by O. Gigon. Munich 1981, 1177 b16–b37) Aristotle is born in 384 BC in Stagira as the son of Nikomachos, the personal physician of the king of Macedonia. In 367 he is admitted to the Academy of Plato and remains there for 20 years. After the death Plato’s Aristotle, at the invitation of the prince Hermias, goes to Assos (Asia Minor). In 345 he moves his research center to Mytilene on Lesbos. There he meets Theophrast, who becomes his student and later his successor. At the request of Philip II of Macedonia, Aristotle is 343/42–340 tutor of his son Alexander, who in 336, after the death of his father, succeeds him. In 335/34 Aristotle returns to Athens and opens his own school in the Lykeion gymnasium. After the death of Alexander in 323, he leaves Athens because of the now anti-Macedonian currents and goes to Chalkis, where he dies in 322 (cf. Höffe 1996). Aristotle has continued Plato’s philosophy in many respects, despite his occasional criticism of him, but has further differentiated and developed question approaches of his teacher into independent disciplines, such as politics, rhetoric and poetics. He introduces the important systematic division of philosophy into ethics, physics and logic (cf. Topik 105 b), which should remain valid until Kant. In some points he radicalizes tendencies that were already laid down by Plato. This mainly affects the determination of the individual. While Plato had already assigned a greater importance to the individual in relation to the general in contrast to Parmenides, Aristotle goes one step further. He describes the individual as a “first substance”, without which the talk about the general would remain meaningless. This ‘realistic’ turn in philosophy is reflected in the fact that a field of philosophical and scientific research opens up, which gives experience a great deal of space. So he intensively deals with the research of biological phenomena, an area that appeared to be of no importance to philosophical-scientific discussion until then (cf. Meyer 2015). You can feel his efforts everywhere to carry out his research not deductively, but inductively. Often, in his investigations, he does not start from theses, but from a problem. For its discussion, he often refers to the traditional solutions to the problem. This is also evidence of how intensively he not only dealt with Plato and the views represented in the Academy, but also with the entire pre-Platonic philosophical tradition. This return to the roots leads, among other things, to the fact that he revives the nature philosophy,

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which was pushed to the sidelines by the Sophists. The decisive factor is that he gives phenomena a significant place. In this respect, he adopts the already established motto of the “salvation of phenomena” by the pre-Socratics. All philosophical statements only have meaning if they can also explain the phenomena that everyone experiences. Aristotle also follows this approach in his ethics. In his work Nicomachean Ethics (cited as EN ), which got its name either from his father, who was the royal physician of the Macedonian king, or from his son of the same name, he makes it clear right at the beginning that he does not want to discuss the idea of the good like Plato, indeed, he even denies that there could be a single, binding idea of the good for all people. The good has a very different meaning in different contexts—for example in the areas of “honor, knowledge and pleasure”. He sums up his rejection in the sentence: “A good that could be shared and understood as a single idea does not exist” (EN, 1096 b). He justifies this rejection with the following consideration: “One does not see, for example, what a weaver or carpenter could benefit from in his art if he knew the good in itself, or how one could become a better doctor or general if he had ‘contemplated the idea of the good’. The doctor does not even seem to be looking for health in itself, but for the health of the human being or perhaps rather for the health of this particular human being. Because he heals the individual” (ibid.). Aristotle here picks up the criticism of the concept of the idea, which was already put forward by Antisthenes (455–360), the founder of the school of Cynics, and to which Plato has given a convincing answer in his dialogue Parmenides. There he criticizes the idea of an “in-itself ” of the idea himself, but at the same time makes it clear that anyone who speaks without recourse to the general, for which the ideas stand, has nothing, “to which he can turn his mind” (Plato: Parmenides, 135 b). And in fact Aristotle does exactly this: He speaks about individuals in view of a general. However, he emphasizes that in many cases the knowledge of the general is the result of a rich experience of individuals. This experience-based knowledge, for example, characterizes a good doctor. In his Ethics, Aristotle addresses the human lifestyles (bioi). Each one strives in its own way for a ‘good life’. The good life remains part of the political community, and this is the subject of the ‘political science’. Aristotle therefore also calls ethics a “part of political science” (EN 1094 a). But ethics is not simply subordinate to political science. Rather, one could understand his ethics as a political ethics. The same applies to his philosophy of law. To be able to represent their reciprocal relationship and their mutual penetration adequately, it would perhaps be advisable to understand them all as parts of a practical philosophy. Aristotle distinguishes action from

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production (poiesis). The decisive difference between them is that production has its goal outside of its activity, while practice finds its goal in itself. The goal of building a building is outside of the activity that leads to the goal. It is completed with the last stone. In contrast, the goal of playing music is not to reach the last tone. Its goal lies in playing music itself. Aristotle emphasizes: “Life, on the other hand, is an action and not a production” (Pol. 1254 a). Therefore, the goal of human life lies in itself. But what is the goal of human practice now? The answer that Aristotle gives is: “People and the educated alike call it happiness, and they equate a good life and good conduct with happiness” (EN 1095 a). He understands happiness (eudaimonia) as “a good life,” i.e. as a good practice. But there is disagreement about what this consists in. Aristotle distinguishes three forms of life in which happiness is sought. First, there is the life oriented towards enjoyment and pleasure (bios apolaustikos), second, the political life oriented towards fame and honor (bios politikos) and third, the “contemplative” (bios theoretikos) (cf. 1095 b). The decision for a way of life is—similarly to Plato—a matter of choice. Aristotle remarks: “The majority of people and the rudest choose pleasure. That is why they also value the life of enjoyment” (1095 b). He characterizes them as follows: “The great mass proves to be completely slavish, because they prefer the life of beasts” (ibid.). The political life goes beyond the life of pleasure, because a certain political competence is necessary to achieve the goal of fame and honor which it pursues. But it also has a deficiency. The political person wants to be honored, but “the honor lies more in the one who honors than in the one who is honored” (ibid.). Because of these deficiencies, these two ways of life remain dependent on something else, on the objects of pleasure or on fame. They are not autonomous, i.e. “self-sufficient”. “We call that self-sufficient which, for itself alone, makes life desirable and completely free of needs. We consider happiness to be something like that, namely that it is the most desirable without anything else being added” (1097 b). In the course of the investigation it will become clear that only the contemplative way of life meets these requirements. Alone, Aristotle does not limit himself in his ethics to now only speaking about the theoretical way of life. The happiness that he seeks to determine is the happiness possible for man and that is subject to anthropological conditions. Of course, this includes that needs and feelings of pleasure play just as important a role as man’s life in a polis, “since man by nature lives in community” (1097 b). The three ways of life strictly correspond to stages in the construction of man. The lowest level represents the satisfaction of physical needs, the second his ‘political nature’ and the third, highest, his reason, which itself is divided into a practical and a theoretical. So the decisive

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question is on which level the way of life chosen by man is located. But even the highest is dependent on the consideration of the two lower ones. Undoubtedly, for Aristotle, a way of life that corresponds to man’s nature is oriented towards reason. For these, certain abilities, skills (aretai) are necessary, in German often referred to as ‘virtues’. Aristotle distinguishes the dianoetic virtues (intellectual virtues) from the ethical virtues, which are also referred to as character virtues. To the first he counts, for example, wisdom (sophia), the ability to grasp (synhesis) and prudence (phronesis); to the character virtues, generosity (eleutheriotes) and moderation (sophrosyne) (cf. 1102 b). The intellectual virtues arise through instruction, the ethical through habit and practice. None of the ethical virtues are natural to us. But they also do not arise against our nature. “We are rather by nature formed to receive them, but they are perfected by habit” (1103 a). These considerations shed light on Aristotle’s understanding of ethics. The ethically significant way of life does not show itself in individual actions, but in the formation of a character that leads to corresponding ethically relevant actions. Aristotle explains this thought as follows: “The virtues, on the other hand, we acquire by previously practicing them, as is also the case with the other skills. For what we are supposed to be able to do through learning, we learn by doing it: by building we become builders and by playing the cithara we become citharists. In the same way we become just by acting justly, prudent by acting prudently, brave by acting bravely” (1103 a/b). He deliberately sets technical and ethical skills on the same level. As important as Aristotle’s considerations open up important pedagogical perspectives, so little may the habit be understood in the sense of training. At the beginning of every action stands the dianoetic virtue of prudence (phronesis), which is to be understood as a “morally practical judgment” (Höffe 1996, 203). For this reason, ethics can only outline ethical action, but cannot give individual instructions. “Neither science nor general recommendations are responsible for this, but the actors themselves must consider the respective situation, just as in medicine and in navigation” (EN 1104 a). Wisdom is also indispensable because, when applying the ethical virtues, the right amount must always be applied situationally. The maxim of moderation already put forward by the “Seven Sages” is given a more precise definition by Aristotle. The right amount always moves in a middle (mesotes) between too much and too little, both of which are bad. He explains this thought with a wealth of examples. So courage is in the middle between cowardice and rashness, generosity is the middle between stinginess and extravagance, and temperance is the middle between dullness and

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intemperance (see Flashar 2014, 79). However, this middle amount cannot be determined arithmetically. So, for example, courage is closer to rashness than to cowardice (see EN 1109 a). It is also situation-specific and individually different. Finally, there are actions and passions that are bad in themselves and for which there is therefore no acceptable middle, such as the passions “schadenfreude, shamelessness or envy, and the actions of adultery, theft and murder” (1107 a). It is also noteworthy that Aristotle does not accept the human passions as an unalterable natural constant in human character, but includes the individual’s behaviour towards his passions in the scope of his ethical considerations. He calls passions “desire, anger, fear, courage, envy, joy, love, hatred, longing, jealousy, pity” and others. He distinguishes between the ability of humans to feel these passions and the properties “by which we behave correctly or incorrectly towards these passions” (1105 b). That is: “If we are prone to anger quickly and without restraint, we behave badly, but if moderately, then correctly, and so also with the others” (ibid.). Like Socrates, Aristotle understands the correct behaviour of humans towards their passions as the result of an action-guiding knowledge (see 1147 b) and agrees with Plato’s Theseus that the formation of a good character is the task of education (see 1104 b). The thought that man is also responsible for his passions (see 1114 b) makes the question of freedom necessary. Aristotle has devoted extensive consideration to it. Aristotle’s concept of freedom includes two aspects. On the one hand, an action is done voluntarily, which has its origin in the actor himself. In addition, however, freedom means the deliberate decision for a certain action. This decision has the character of a preferential choice (prohairesis). Whoever decides, prefers one thing to another; he chooses one and rejects all other possible actions. Aristotle begins his deliberations with our everyday judgments of actions. We praise some and condemn others. We assume that the actor has carried out his action voluntarily. We forgive involuntary actions or even have pity on the actor. He defines involuntariness as follows: “That which happens through force or ignorance seems to be involuntary. That which has its origin outside and in such a way that the actor or sufferer can have no influence on it, for example when the storm drives someone somewhere, or when people rule over him” (1110 a). He distinguishes between natural force and political force. He continues this thought and makes it clear that despite this apparently clear definition, the question of voluntariness must be very carefully assessed in each individual case. He makes this clear with two examples. He asks: How is a situation to be judged in which a tyrant

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has brought the parents and children of a person into his power and only releases them if the person concerned carries out a “disgraceful deed”? And how are actions to be judged when someone separates from his possessions in a storm? There is no doubt that these are difficult cases, because no “sensible” person would voluntarily commit a “disgraceful deed”, nor voluntarily separate from his possessions. Nevertheless, Aristotle notes: “But these actions resemble voluntary actions more. For in the moment when they are carried out, one decides for them. And the goal of an action is determined by the situation. Therefore, one must speak of voluntary or involuntary for the moment when it is done” (1110 a). Both characteristics of a free action are given here. First of all, the action has its physical origin in the actor himself: “For the origin of the movement of the tool-like parts in such actions is in the actor himself. But with whom the origin of the action lies, with him lies the action and non-action itself. Therefore, such is voluntary” (ibid.). In addition, secondly, the actor has decided for a certain action, i.e. he could have acted differently. So Aristotle notes: “For some things one should not be forced to do at all, but rather endure and suffer the worst” (ibid.). An example of this would be parricide. It becomes clear that Aristotle distinguishes between voluntariness ‘in itself ’, i.e. in general and in a specific situation. However, the cases he discussed show that the scope of freedom is very large for him and the area of involuntariness is very small. This means: “What is involuntary in itself, but in a certain situation is preferred to another possibility, so that the origin is in the actor, which is involuntary in itself, but, since a decision is made against another possibility, becomes voluntary” (1110 b). But there are also limits to freedom. One lies in violence, i.e. in an event that does not have its origin in the actor, like for example the shipwrecked person who is involuntarily washed up on a foreign shore, generally speaking, the sufferer. The second, however, is ignorance. This does not refer to a general lack of knowledge, but to the lack of knowledge of the concrete circumstances of the deed. Aristotle also gives examples for this. Who, in war, does not realize that his opponent is his son, fights him involuntarily; or “one strikes, for his defense, and kills. […] In all these things there can be ignorance in relation to the deed. And whoever is ignorant in this sense seems to have acted involuntarily, especially in the main points: main points are the area and the purpose of the deed” (1111 a). For the assessment of the voluntariness of a deed, therefore, the questions must be answered whether the origin of the deed was in the actor himself, whether he had precise knowledge of the circumstances of the deed and whether the result of the deed was in his intention.

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These considerations show that Aristotle’s ethics has a close relationship to legal questions. For example, he discusses the question of how to assess a deed that, as a result of drunkenness, led to a false assessment of a situation, i.e. was characterized by partial ignorance? The answer is: ignorance does not protect against punishment. On the contrary: “One is also punished because of ignorance itself, if one seems to be responsible for one’s own ignorance, as for example the penalties for drunkenness are doubled. For the origin is in oneself; one was indeed in control of not getting drunk, and this was then the cause of ignorance” (1113 b). And Aristotle does not accept the argument that a drinker is not to blame for his addiction, because “then one is to blame oneself for becoming what one is, because one lives without restraint […]. Just as each one is active, so one becomes oneself ” (1114 a). Excluded from the principle of free decision and thus from responsibility for actions are only children (cf. 1100 a) and the “simple-minded or insane” (1112 a). In the final chapter of his ethics, Aristotle sums up the most important aspects once again. These are the questions of pleasure, happiness and politics. He emphasizes that pleasure plays a central role in humans from an early age and that, for this reason, pleasure and pain are also used specifically as educational tools. In addition, pleasure plays an important role for ethically significant action and for the achievement of happiness. Nevertheless, pleasure is approved by some, but, for example Plato, decidedly rejected by others (cf. 1172 a/b). Aristotle rejects both extremes and attempts to rehabilitate pleasure as a general human phenomenon while making differentiations in the concept. He emphasizes that while there are cases in which pleasure and pain form a contrast that cancels each other out, for example, painful hunger through pleasurable eating, this is not generally the case. Thus, sensory perception, smell, hearing, taste is something pleasant in itself, as are mental activities such as learning, memory, and hope. They occur without previous pain (cf. 1173 b). On the other hand, pleasure is also not the highest goal. So we also take on painful experiences that occur with the transition from childhood to adulthood and no legally thinking person would do “disgraceful” things just to avoid pain. Pleasure is not the goal of all activity, but a moment accompanying it. “Pleasure completes the activity and thus also life” (1175 a). However, it is also true that man is unable to “be continuously active: and thus to feel pleasure” (ibid.). In addition, it must be considered that what people feel as pleasant is very different from individual to individual. The so-called “shameful lusts”, on the other hand, do not deserve the name pleasure. They are only for people “in bad shape” (cf. 1173 b). In contrast, the perfect pleasure accompanies the activity of a blessed person (cf. 1176 a).

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Again, Aristotle emphasizes that happiness is an activity and not a state. Nobody is “happy who sleeps all his life”. Rather, “happiness is an activity in accordance with virtue” (1177 a). However, virtue alone is not enough to be happy, because those who claim that a man who is flogged on the wheel and who falls into great misfortune is happy if he is only virtuous, claim intentionally or unintentionally that it is not important” (1153 b). Neither a slave can be happy, nor a person who lacks good physical condition or external goods (cf. 1178 b). What is the virtuous activity that leads to happiness? Aristotle’s answer is: it is the activity of virtue that makes us best, and that is the “spirit” (1177 a). The activity of the spirit is philosophy and the corresponding theoretical, i.e. contemplative way of life. Not only does “philosophy offer us pleasures of wonderful purity and constancy” (ibid.), it is also characterized by a high degree of autonomy compared to other ways of life. This means: “It offers us nothing but contemplation; from practical action, on the other hand, we gain a greater or smaller benefit in addition to the action” (1177 b). However, a life in this autonomy is something that “is higher than it is humanly possible”. He can only do it, “as long as he has something divine in him.” A life according to the spirit must be “divine in comparison to human life” (see quote), and conversely “the activity of God, which surpasses all happiness, be contemplative” (1178 b). By approaching the contemplative way of life, man at the same time approaches the divine. Therefore, it would be wrong to think only of the human as a human, but we should “strive to be immortal and do everything to live according to the best that is in us” (see quote). It is noteworthy that the Nicomachean Ethics does not end with this view of the divine, but, similar to Plato’s ‘Allegory of the Cave’, the reader is led back to the field of pedagogy and politics. The question is: How can people be brought not only to know the skills (virtues) necessary for the right way of life, but also to acquire them? Words alone help little, because most people only change their behavior through the threat of punishment. It is crucial that already in the education of young people not only the instruction is to be observed, but also habituation and exercise, since they lead to the formation of a good character. These efforts are facilitated by the right laws, because the individual efforts of the educators need the corresponding legal framework. But apart from the “state of the Spartans” so far little attention has been paid to this area in politics. The Sophists, who claimed to be able to teach political education, have—according to Aristotle—completely failed, because they, in his opinion, knew nothing about politics and saw in it only a branch of

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rhetoric. Therefore, it is necessary to turn to the question again, to collect existing constitutions and to examine them for their quality also with regard to pedagogical questions. Aristotle’s ethics not only became the foundation of ancient Greece, but was also highly esteemed in the Middle Ages, especially since Thomas Aquinas. A decisive philosophical criticism was Kant of ancient eudaimonistic ethics. However, in the twentieth century, it experienced a “rehabilitation of practical philosophy” through hermeneutic philosophy (Riedel 2001).

3 The Tranquility of the Soul (Hellenistic Ethics) “Therefore, we also call pleasure the beginning and end of the blessed life. For we have recognized it as the first and innate good, from it we begin with everything we choose and avoid, and we rely on it when we judge every good with the feeling as a measure. And just because it is the first and innate good, we do not choose every pleasure, but it happens that we go beyond many pleasurable sensations if they result in an excess of annoying things for us. We also prefer many pains to pleasurable sensations if a greater pleasure follows us after enduring the pain for a long time. […] When we say that pleasure is the goal of life, we do not mean the lusts of the profligates and the mere enjoyment […] but we understand neither pain in the body nor disturbance in the soul. For drinking parties and continuous swarming and not the enjoyment of boys and women and of fish and everything else that a richly stocked table offers does not create the pleasurable life, but the sober consideration, which investigates the causes of everything we choose and avoid and drives out the empty opinions, from which the worst confusion of the soul arises. For all this, the beginning and the greatest good is insight. Therefore, insight is even more valuable than philosophy. From it all other virtues arise, and it teaches that it is not possible to live pleasantly without living intelligently, beautifully and justly, nor to live intelligently, beautifully and good without living pleasantly. For the virtues are naturally connected with the pleasurable life, and the pleasurable life is inseparably connected with them.” (Epicurus: On the Overcoming of Fear. Introduced and translated by O. Gigon. Munich 1983, 103–105.) Hellenism offers a number of historical problems. The first is the question of periodization. A proposal going back to Droysen names the death of

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Alexander the Great (323 BC) as the beginning and the beginning of the Roman imperial era as the end of the epoch, i.e. the last three pre-Christian centuries. Philosophically, however, these tight boundaries are problematic because Hellenistic philosophy, with its schools of Epicureanism, Stoicism and Skepticism, also persisted in Roman times and after the spread of Christianity began. So Seneca (4 BC–65 AD), Epictetus (c. 55 AD–135 AD), Marcus Aurelius (121 AD–180 AD) and Sextus Empiricus (c. 200 AD) all lived on. In addition to the question of temporal boundaries, Hellenism also contains another problem. It concerns the philosophical assessment, and this is not only due to the difficult and meager sources. Not a few philosophy historians see the original philosophical achievement of Greek philosophy as ended with the end of the classical period, i.e. with the death of Aristotle. In their eyes, Hellenistic philosophy appears as eclecticism, which is also determined by a retreat into the private. While these judgments may appear justified to some extent, the achievements of the Stoics in the field of linguistic philosophy and logic must not be overlooked, nor their maxims of prudence, which not only had an extraordinary effect in their time, but also led to the fact that even today the image of “the philosopher” is often associated with the “stoic sage” in public. The Samian-born Epicurus (341–270) founded a philosophical school in Athens in 307/06, on whose property there was a garden (kepos), after which his school was often named. The members of the school, which included women and slaves, maintained a close friendly relationship with each other. The teacher himself was held in high esteem and his sentences were memorized. Epicurus’ philosophical work follows the Aristotelian division of philosophy into physics, ethics and logic, a division that prevailed in Hellenism. In his physical writings, Epicurus closely follows the atomic theory of Leucippus (fifth century BC) and Democritus (460–371). He thereby sets himself in conscious opposition to Plato and Aristotle, both of whom rejected the materialism associated with it. According to Epicurus, “the universe consists of bodies and emptiness” (Epicurus 1983, 68). The bodies represent a composition of smallest, invisible, indivisible and imperishable particles, the so-called atoms (atomon). They move with different speeds in the universe. But the universe and the world are not identical, because Epicurus postulates a multitude of worlds. The gods, whose existence Epicurus by no means denies, live in a perfect bliss between the worlds. Due to the imperishability of the atoms, the universe is “eternal” (ibid., 69). This means: “Nothing will come from non-being” (ibid., 67). Therefore

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“the universe has always been as it is now, and will always be so” (ibid.). “Furthermore, the universe is unlimited” (ibid., 68). Since there is only atoms and emptiness in the universe, the human body is to be understood as a composition of atoms, and likewise “that the soul is a finely divided body” (ibid., 77). Epicurus explains the perception of objects by the soul with the fact that from the objects constantly corresponding images (eidola) of the form of the object flow away and enter us, “which causes us to see the shapes and to think” (ibid., 71). This leads to questions of epistemology and logic. While truth is to be understood as the correct linking of ideas with perceptual images, he explains error by the fact that we produce ideas, thoughts and dreams ourselves, which we then wrongly link with the images coming from outside (cf. ibid., 72). In his ethical considerations, Epicurus defines happiness as pleasure (hedoné). The emphasis on the pleasure principle has earned him the reproach of hedonism, which does not give reason a proper place. But the reproach is unjustified. Epicurus merely points out that people avoid pain and seek pleasure from an early age. But by no means does he talk about unrestrained hedonism (see quote). Like Plato and Aristotle, he emphasizes that unrestrained pleasure can lead to considerable suffering, while it is quite sensible to endure pain temporarily for the sake of later pleasure. In order to weigh up pleasure and pain correctly, an insight into the true happiness of man is therefore necessary, and this can only be gained—according to Epicurus—on the path of philosophy. He therefore begins his letter to Menoikeus dedicated to the topic of happiness with the exhortation to philosophy: “Whoever is young should not hesitate to philosophize, and whoever is old should not tire of philosophizing. For no one is too early and no one is too late to take care of the health of the soul. Whoever claims that it is not yet time to philosophize or that the time has already passed, resembles one who claims that the time for happiness is not yet or no longer there” (ibid., 100). The highest standard of happiness is set by the gods. The gods live far away from the human world in a state of perfection, bliss and painlessness (apatheia). But precisely for this reason they do not care about people; because every sorrow contradicts perfection and apathy. Therefore, people have nothing to hope for from the gods, but also nothing to fear. Epicurus associates the concept of apathy with the thought that true happiness of man does not consist in a maximum of pleasure, but in the painlessness and sufferinglessness. This means: “But if nothing hurts us, we don’t need pleasure anymore” (ibid., 103). Epicurus remarks: “If we feel neither pain nor confusion […] the whole storm of the soul subsides” (ibid., 102). Inner peace is apathy, the synonym of happiness.

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Epicurus admits that pain cannot really be avoided. But he has a consolation: A severe pain only lasts for a short time, while a long-lasting pain is bearable (cf. ibid., 106). The second, equally important aspect of happiness is the liberation from fear, especially the fear of death. Here too, philosophy helps. It conveys the insight that death is not to be feared. Therefore his advice: “Get used to the idea that death does not concern us. For all good and bad is based on perception. But death is the loss of perception. […] The most terrible evil, death, does not concern us; because as long as we exist, death is not there, and when death is there, we do not exist anymore” (ibid., 101). The liberation from this fear leads to the improvement of life. What is decisive for the quality of life is not to live as long as possible, “but to enjoy a time as pleasant as possible” (ibid., 102). In order to achieve a high quality of life, it is not at all sensible to increase one’s desires for the sake of pleasure, but on the contrary, to reduce one’s needs to the necessary, natural, and easily satisfied level. The one who frees himself from excessive desire is autonomous, i.e. self-sufficient. Selfsufficiency is a great good, because it opens up the decisive condition of happiness. Epicurus emphasizes: “The greatest reward of self-sufficiency is freedom” (ibid., 113). It is also the interest in freedom that Epicurus leads him to recommend a ‘life in hiding’ (lathe biosas) to his pupils, beyond economic and political dependence. He says: “One must free oneself from the prison of business and politics” (ibid., 111). Epicurus supports his thesis of the existence of freedom with two further considerations. On the one hand, freedom is made possible by the fact that the atoms do not move at all on causally determined paths, but that there are small deviations, an idea developed by his pupil and interpreter Lucretius (cf. Lucretius 1960 II, V. 249– 270), on the other hand, however, Epicurus shows that determinism leads to a contradiction, because the statement “everything happens according to necessity” is made with the same necessity as the statement “not everything happens according to necessity” (Epicurus 1983, 109). The second philosophical school of Hellenism is the Stoics, a school that existed from about 300 BC to about 200 AD. It got its name from the colonnade in Athens (stoa poikile), where Zenon of Citium, the founder of the school, taught. We distinguish between the older, the middle, and the younger Stoics. In the following, some thoughts of the younger Stoics may be explained, which have become historically particularly effective. Seneca (4 BC–65 AD), who was born in Cordoba in Spain, came from a wealthy Spanish noble family. As a young man he went to Rome and soon made a name for himself as a lawyer and gifted speaker. His close

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relationship with Emperor Nero, whose increasingly unsuccessful advisor he was for a time, was of fateful importance. After his withdrawal from politics, he was accused of involvement in a conspiracy against the emperor, and he was forced to take his own life. In contrast to Epicurus, Seneca as a follower of Stoicism is convinced that the universe is not a conglomerate of atoms, but a rational, purposeful context that is organized according to a divine plan. In his work On Providence (De Providentia) he emphasizes that “such a magnificent creation cannot exist without some protector, that when stars come together or move apart, this is not the result of an unpredictable impulse, and that what blind chance drives often tumbles and quickly collides with obstacles […]. But this undisturbed, rapid world revolution takes place according to the command of an eternal law” (Seneca 1991, 29). However, this concept raises the question: How is it possible that, in such a rational, divine world order, it happens again and again that “good people suffer evil”? (ibid.). Seneca’s amazing answer is: Nothing bad happens to good people. Just as a father does not pamper his son, but challenges him to develop his powers, so does God: “He does not pamper a good man; he puts him to the test, hardens him, forms him for himself ” (ibid., 31). The ethical consequence is that man should not doubt the rational nature of the universe established by God, but accept all destiny as tests of God and orient his own actions according to the rational order of nature. In this way, the providence of God (theology), the natural order of the world (physics) and the maxims of action (ethics) are combined. Since nature itself is a rational, God-guided organism, an ethic appealing to the reason of man can only recommend man to live in accordance with this rational nature (secundum naturam vivere). He says: “For nature must be taken as a guide; reason takes care of it, and it gets advice from it. So the same is a happy and a natural life” (ibid., 189). The natural life, which follows reason, is also virtuous, because reason is the highest virtue of man. Virtue forms a contrast to pleasure. However, Seneca does not plead for completely renouncing pleasure, but rather for giving priority to virtue and leaving reason to judge which of the “sensual pleasures […] remain within the limits of natural desire” (ibid., 195). As long as reason remains in charge, natural sensual pleasures are acceptable. And since Epicurus also represented this principle, he wants to defend him against unjustified attacks by his “stoic fellow-believers”. Epicurus did not represent an unrestrained hedonism at all, but even with him the pleasure had to be “limited to a few and meager […]. He demands that she follow nature” (ibid., 195).

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Seneca, who had become wealthy due to his temporary proximity to Nero, soon had to face the accusation that his teaching did not correspond to his own way of life. In his treatise On the Happy Life he formulates this accusation as follows: “Why is this man interested in philosophy and going through life so rich? Why does he say that one should despise wealth, and keep it? Life seems contemptible to him—and yet he lives! One should not take care of one’s health—and yet he takes care of it very carefully” (ibid., 204). Seneca meets this accusation by emphasizing that it is not the possession itself that is reprehensible, but only the way in which one values it. For this he develops an argumentative line that should find its way into the New Testament. The ‘philosopher’ does not have to give up his possessions, he may only not be attached to them. That is, “he says that one should despise all this, but not in order to deny oneself possession, but not to possess it in worry. He does not reject those things, but says to them, if they leave him, carelessly goodbye” (ibid., 204). Paulus, a contemporary of Seneca, accordingly developed the maxim that it is a matter of ‘having as if one did not have’ and of “buying as if one did not own them” (1 Corinthians 7, V. 30). Similarly, the Stoic virtue of needlessness has found its way into Christianity, for example the command: “Do not store up treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy them” (Mt. 6,19). Finally, Seneca also relates the Stoic indifference to external goods to life itself. The goal of a virtuous life is not the longest possible, but the best possible life. This consideration also changes the attitude towards death. Therefore he says: “It is pleasant to be with oneself for as long as possible, if one has become worthy of enjoying oneself. / But the question would be whether one should not despise to go to the extreme limit of old age and wait for one’s end, instead of bringing it about oneself ” (The Stoics, ed. Weinkauf 1994, 338). He knows that there are philosophers who claim that “suicide is a crime” (ibid., 342), but the one who speaks like this “does not see that he is blocking the way to freedom” (ibid.). For us, only the entrance into life is given by the “eternal law” of nature, for the exit there are many ways open to us. The ethical consequence is: “One must shape one’s life in such a way that others also approve of one’s death, one must only justify it to oneself ” (ibid.). Reasons for suicide can be of various kinds. It is not only age with declining mental faculties or unbearable pain that prevent a reasonable way of life, but also the loss of freedom. For Seneca it is clear that even “the dirtiest death is to be preferred to the cleanest slavery” (ibid., 344). Freedom is also the central theme of the ethics of Epictetus (55–135 AD). Born in Hieropolis (today Pamukkale, Turkey), he was himself a slave as the son of a slave woman and was sold in his youth to Rome, where he

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served a familiar Nero. But this first allowed him a philosophical education with the Stoic Musonius Rufus and later even set him free. At the age of 40, Epictetus founded his own philosophical school, which he first led in Rome and after the expulsion of the philosophers Domitian in the year 94 AD continued in the west Greek Nikopolis. Freedom and unfreedom form the center of his thinking. He expands the concept of freedom beyond the political sphere. This leads to new boundaries. He says: “Of the things are the one in our power, the others are not. In our power are: our opinion, our action, our desire and avoidance—in short: all our doing, which proceeds from us. / Not in our power are: our body, our possessions, reputation, external position—in a word: everything that is not our doing. / What is in our power is free by nature, can not be hindered or restricted; but what is not in our power is perishable, unfree, can be hindered, is under the influence of others” (Epictetus 1992, 9). Philosophical education for Epictetus is to make the right distinction between the two areas in each concrete situation. If someone holds something that is not subject to his disposal, he will not only “have inconveniences”, but “quarrel with God and the world” (ibid.). The decisive factor is that the actor finds the right attitude towards the things that are not in his power. This is not easy because everyone hangs his heart on things he has appropriated: objects of daily use, but also living beings, his wife, his children and finally his own life. He can lose all of this. A vase breaks, a beloved wife or child dies. In all these cases, the philosophical attitude is to understand that what was lost was only foreign, borrowed property. Therefore his appeal: “Never say of a thing: I have lost it, but: I have given it back” (ibid., 14). Like Seneca, Epictetus is convinced that there is a divine providence, a ruler of the world to whom we are obliged. Although we are free in our thinking and acting, the external conditions of our existence are predetermined by him. He compares this world ruler to a poet who has written a drama in which we have a role to play. “Consider yourself an actor in a drama: the role is given to you by the poet, you have to play it, whether it is short or long. If he wants you to play a beggar, you have to play this role well, just as if you have to play a cripple, a prince or an ordinary person. / Your task is only to play the role given to you well; it is the task of another to choose it” (ibid., 17). The human being is an actor, a person acting on the great stage of the world and as such a ‘cosmopolitan’, a world citizen (cf. ibid., 127). He is free to shape the role assigned to him, but he has to accept the situational conditions of his existence. It is important to realize that man is only externally

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unfree, but internally absolutely free. Epictetus, of whom it is reported that his leg was broken during his time as a slave under torture, formulates his great plea for inner freedom in a fictional dialogue: “Can anyone move you to agree to a lie? No one. So in the point of agreement or not, no one can force you. Of course. Furthermore: can anyone force you to want something you don’t want? Yes. Because if he threatens me with death or imprisonment, he forces me to want it. But if you despise death and imprisonment, do you still have to care about him? No. Is it now in your power to despise death or not? In my power” (ibid., 171). The history of the Stoics is inextricably linked not only with Christianity, but also played an important role in modern times, when ethics emerged from theological contexts. Its traces can be found just as with Descartes and Spinoza as with Kant, Fichte and Hegel. The third Hellenistic school, Skepticism, joins in addition to such different thinkers as Homer and Heraclitus primarily to the Socratic admission of own ignorance (cf. Plato: Apology 22d). Within the school of Skepticism, the ‘academic Skepticism’ developed in the continuation of the Platonic Academy can be distinguished from the ‘Pyrrhonian Skepticism’ to which Sextus Empiricus, the most important representative of this direction, refers. Sextus Empiricus was a Greek philosopher who belonged to the empirical school of medicine and lived around 200 AD. The model of his Skepticism was for him Pyrrho of Elis (ca. 360–270 BC), who himself wrote nothing, but because of his radical, all external dangers despising, lifestyle is considered the founder of the skeptical school (cf. Sextus Empiricus: Outline of Pyrrhonian Skepticism 2013, 94). The goal of Sextus Empiricus’ considerations is in the field of ethics. Right at the beginning he emphasizes: “The motivating principle of Skepticism we call the hope for mental peace” (ibid., 95). Nevertheless, the way to this goal leads over a long and complicated destruction of our entire knowledge. He develops his understanding of Skepticism in confrontation with Stoicism and the Skepticism of the ‘New Academy’. He accuses both of dogmatism. He accuses the Stoics of dogmatic assertions about the nature of the universe and ethical statements based on them, and the ‘New Academy’ of the dogmatic assertion “everything is unrecognizable” (ibid., 148), while the Skepticism he represents “reckons with the possibility that some will also be recognized” (ibid.). The thesis he represents is: Everything is uncertain. The senses do not provide certain knowledge, because they lead not only in humans and animals, but also among humans to quite different judgments. Therefore, the judgments do not provide truth, because they would have to be justified by means of a proof. But either the proof relies again on the allegedly evident

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sensory experience and thus gets into a dilemma (circular argument) or into a regress. This means: Whether there is a binding criterion of truth is uncertain (ibid., 157). Sextus Empiricus provides a wealth of examples to support his thesis. They are all supposed to make it clear that there is an equally strong counter-thesis to every thesis. By joining the Parmenidean and Platonic doubts about the reliability of the senses, he emphasizes: “The same tower appears from afar round, from near square. […] and the same oar in the water broken, outside the water straight” (ibid., 121). So we do not know whether the tower is round or square, the oar is straight or bent. Therefore, we can only talk about our sensations, i.e. how something appears to us, how it relates to the thing in itself, i.e. from its nature, we do not know. This can be shown by the fact that honey tastes sweet to the healthy, but not to the sick (cf. ibid., 171). The relativity in the field of custom is grave. Sextus Empiricus goes back here to the already problematic relationship of physis and nomos of the Sophists. Customs and laws are agreed for them; they are not based on nature. Sextus Empiricus compares the customs of foreign countries with the customs and laws of his own country. So in contrast to his own country, adultery is allowed in some countries (cf. ibid., 281), as is public intercourse with the Indians (ibid., 127), marriage between siblings in Egypt (ibid., 128), and finally the Scythians do not take care of their old parents, but “cut their throats as soon as they are over sixty years old” (ibid., 281). Just as we cannot recognize a nature decisive for our action, so too does not a god. While it is possible to think of God, it is nevertheless impossible to prove his existence (cf. ibid., 224). Above all, the idea of a wise, benevolent and all-powerful God who is concerned about people, causes great difficulties. Obviously, he does not take care of all people and obviously there is much evil in the world. Therefore, the following situation arises: Either God wants to take care of everyone but cannot, then he is weak; or he can, but does not want to, then he is malicious or he cannot and does not want to, then he is malicious and weak. But to assert that would be a “sacrilege” (cf. ibid., 226). Since it is not possible to find truth neither in nature nor in God, an extraordinary mental unrest arises in humans. But also for Sextus Empiricus the goal of life remains, as for the Stoics, the mental peace (ataraxia). For the skeptic, however, it occurs rather by chance. “For the skeptic began to philosophize in order to judge and recognize the representations which are true and which are false, in order to find peace. But then he got into an equal conflict, and because he could not decide it, he stopped. But when he stopped, the mental peace followed him by chance in the things based on

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dogmatic belief ” (ibid., 100). The highest goal of life, which thus arises, is “the undisturbed and sea-like calm of the soul” (ibid., 95). It occurs when the arguments for and against something are equally strong (isostheneia). This balance of arguments leads to a pause, i.e. to a withholding of the judgment (epoché). But does this occasionally occurring state have practical consequences for everyday life? Sextus Empiricus admits: No one can resist the “experientially forced experiences”, and no one can deny the feeling of warmth or cold, of hunger or satiety, or grant both the same approval. The skeptic is only non-dogmatic in that he “refuses to agree to any of the hidden things investigated in the sciences” (ibid., 96). Therefore, a discrepancy remains between theoretical and practical judgments in life. The principles of his ethics are therefore very pragmatic and traditional. They are “based on everyday life experience” (ibid., 99). This includes four maxims: They follow from nature, “insofar as we by nature have the ability to perceive and think sensually; from experience compulsion, insofar as hunger leads us to food, thirst to drink; from tradition of customs and laws, insofar as we take it over for everyday life so that we regard fear of God as a good, godlessness as an evil; from transfer to technique finally, insofar as we are not inactive in the techniques we take over” (ibid.). Skeptical philosophy is extremely resigned. It has lost the still existing at Plato and Aristotle power of world orientation in theoretical and political-practical respect. It is therefore comprehensible that in this philosophical vacuum Christianity developed beyond the status of a religious sect and became a spiritual power (cf. Hossenfelder in: Sextus Empiricus 2013, 10 ff.). In the Middle Ages skepticism played no role: It was only newly discussed in modern times by Descartes, Hume and Kant. A decisive update it received through the in the phenomenology of Husserl again enlivened thought of the epoché.

II Faith and Reason—Philosophical Theological Ethics

Ethics, in the form of problem solving founded by Aristotle, is a philosophical discipline. It makes general statements about the nature of man and about his goals. It defines happiness as the goal of human life. The Aristotelian ethics justifies its statements with reasonable arguments. All statements made by Aristotle in the context of his ethics are based on reason. However, this understanding of ethics is not self-evident. For example, if you look at the religious commandments and prohibitions of the Old Testament, a completely different picture emerges. The Decalogue (Ex. 20:1– 17 and Dtn. 5:6–21) is embedded in the story of Yahweh with his people. This is made clear in the first commandment: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before me” (Ex. 20:2). If you look at the commandments and prohibitions individually, you get the impression that many of them meet the claim of reason, for example “You shall not kill” (v. 13) and “You shall not steal” (v. 15). But appearances are deceptive; because they derive their legitimacy from the authority of God, i.e. not because they are good, God wants them, but they are good because God wants them. This is most clearly shown in God’s command to Abraham, to kill his son Isaac (Gen. 22:1–14). God’s command blatantly contradicts every commandment of reason and disregards the natural love of the father. It is an early example of a command to religiously motivated violence, which serves the purpose of testing obedience, that has its place in a Sacred Scripture. Abraham is praised by him for his willingness to kill in the name of God (cf. v. 16) and precisely for this reason he is revered as “Father of Faith”. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer-Verlag GmbH, DE, part of Springer Nature 2023 W. Pleger, The Good Life, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-05969-7_3

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In the New Testament other commandments appear, such as the commandment of love of neighbor (Lk. 10:25–37) and the commandment of love of enemies (Mt. 5:44). There are the beatitudes of the “Sermon on the Mount”, which promise salvation to the peacemakers (Mt. 5:9). But even here it is not a statement of a rational ethics; because salvation is only promised to those who believe in Christ: “But he that believeth not shall be damned” (Mk. 16:16). On the other hand, all commandments and promises are under the sign of the eschatological message of Jesus: “Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Mt. 4:17). It is so close that it can be said: “This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled” (Mk. 13:30). For this reason, it has been spoken of a ‘interim ethic’ (Schweitzer 1966, 628). But in fact, the Christians had to come to terms with a delay in the Parousia. Communities also formed outside Palestine, and Hellenistic thought, including Stoic ethics with its universal claim, found its way into the New Testament. Christian message, mystery religion, and Gnosis mixed together. The religion of early Christianity is a “syncretistic phenomenon” (Bultmann 2000, 191). In Christianity, specifically religious claims are combined with universal philosophical claims. Christian love of neighbor (caritas) and the Stoic ideal of humanity largely agree in practice, despite different justifications. For this reason, the history of Christian ethics is unique. It is a philosophically-theological ethics. With it also arises the guiding theme. It is the tension-filled relationship between faith and reason (fides et ratio). The authors treated here show this. While Augustine initially incorporates elements of Neoplatonism into his thinking, he later turns increasingly against philosophy. Thomas Aquinas wants, in renewal of Aristotelian thought, to reconcile faith and reason again. Luther goes back to Augustine in his thinking, rejects the claim of reason, and relies solely on faith (sola fide). For Kierkegaard too, there is a paradox between faith and reason. But for him too, it is only faith that saves humans.

1 The Beatitude in the Hereafter (Augustine) “If we now ask the City of God […] about its opinion on the highest good and evil, it replies that eternal life is the highest good and eternal death the greatest evil. […] But those who think that the goal of good and evil is to be found in this life, either seek the highest good in the body or in the soul or in both. […] in any case, they want to be blessed here in

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astonishing blindness and to become blessed by themselves. But the truth mocks them […]. For who would be able to do it, and let his eloquence flow like a stream, to describe the misery of life? […] Let us think of those original goods of nature. When, where and how would it be good for them in this life, that they would not, exposed to uncertain chances, waver insecurely? Pain contradicts pleasure, unrest contradicts rest; but is there a pain, an unrest that could not affect the body of the wise man? […] Therefore, the apostle Paul […] says: ‘For we are saved by hope […].’ As we are healed by hope, so we are also made blessed by hope and therefore do not yet hold the salvation, just as the beatitude, in our hands, but wait for the future beatitude, namely in patience.” (Augustine: The City of God. Book 11–22. Munich 1991, 528 f. a. 536) The lifetime of Augustine (354–430) falls into a period of historical upheaval. It is the time of the transition from antiquity to the Middle Ages, the time of the spread of Christianity in the Roman Empire, its elevation to the state religion by Emperor Theodosius around 380, the ban on pagan cults and the destruction of pagan temples in 391. But Augustine’s life is also shaped by a series of personal crises and intellectual reorientations. This is also reflected in his writings. They do not form a systematic whole. Therefore, the respective context of the work history has to be considered when interpreting (cf. Flasch 1994, 3). Augustine is born as the son of a Christian mother and a pagan father in Thagaste (today’s Souk Ahras in Algeria). He studies rhetoric in Carthage and becomes a professor of rhetoric in both cities himself. The writings of Cicero make a big impression on him and awaken his interest in philosophical questions. In addition, he appropriates the school curriculum of the Stoics. A temporary extramarital relationship with a young woman in 371, who gives birth to a son two years later, is ended at the urging of his mother. In 373 there is a first personal and religious turning point. He discovers Manichaeism for himself, a doctrine that was developed by the Persian prophet Mani (216–276). It has its center in the idea that there are two kingdoms: the kingdom of light, led by the god of light, and a kingdom of darkness, led by a god of this world. Both kingdoms are in conflict. Man is caught up in this conflict. Important for Augustine was that Manichaeism, despite different religious sources, saw itself as the completion of a Christianity that rejected the Old Testament with its morally problematic views. Augustine belonged to this religious tradition from 373–382. In 383 he became acquainted with skeptical philosophy in Rome, which, however, could not provide him with a lasting reorientation. A year later he was

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appointed professor of rhetoric in Milan. There he met Bishop Ambrosius, who brought him a Neo-Platonically interpreted Christianity. Against this background, his conversion experience in 386 is to be understood. A year later he was baptized by Ambrosius. After his return to Thagaste and Carthage in 388, he was elected priest in Hippo Regius in 390 and ordained bishop in 395. This is the time of his confrontation with the Donatists, a religious movement that was at home in the lower social classes and advocated the separation of state and church. He also combats them with the means of state power. In 396 there is another decisive turning point in his theological orientation. He develops the concept of the doctrine of grace. According to it, it is not possible for man to achieve the state of grace through his own moral effort. This new doctrine leads to a fierce dispute in 411 with the Pelagians. They emphasize the importance of human freedom for the attainment of salvation and accuse Augustine of a relapse into Manichaeism. The new doctrine of grace also forms the theological basis for Augustine’s last great work De civitate dei (On the City of God), which is written in the years 413–427. Augustine dies in 430 during the siege of Hippo by the Vandals (cf. Marrou 1984, Pleger 2018). A predominant feature of Augustine’s thinking is the turning away from the external world and the retreat into one’s own inner self, a tendency that connects him with late antique philosophy. The idea of self-examination becomes an ethically significant motive in his thinking. Although the sentences “I searched myself ” (DK, fr. 101) and “You cannot find out the boundaries of the soul by walking, and whether you go along any road; so deep is its sense” (DK, fr. 45) can already be found in Heraclitus, they remain programmatic for him due to the scarce sources, while Augustine fills these thoughts with life. The path inward serves not only self-knowledge, but is also based on the conviction that the ethically significant truth is not to be found in the contemplation of the world, but only in the innermost self of man. He says: “Do not go outside, return within yourself! The truth dwells in the innermost self of man” (Augustine 1991 a, 123). The path outward is misleading, because in the innermost self, in his “memoria”, in his memory, better, in his consciousness, man finds the world reflected before him. Augustine admiringly remarks: “I remember it at will, distinguish between the scent of lilies and violets without smelling, and in memory, without using taste and touch, prefer honey to must, smooth to rough. / I do this inside, in the spacious dwelling of my memory. Heaven and earth and sea are accommodated there with everything I have ever experienced of them, except what I forgot. […] A great wonder rises in me, I

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am astonished. And people go and admire the peaks of the mountains, the mighty floods of the sea, the broad rivers flowing by, the circumference of the ocean and the circling of the stars and forget themselves in the process” (Augustinus 1982, 255 ff.). But Augustine does not only wonder about the wealth of his imagination, but even more about himself, namely that all this takes place in his “own I”. This thinking, conscious, self-comprehending I that encompasses the world in itself is so certain of itself, i.e. of its existence, that even the most radical objection of the skeptics cannot shake this certainty. Nonetheless, Augustine does not set the thinking I absolutely, and therefore self-examination is also not the final goal. Already in his early writing Soliloquia (Soliloquies) he makes clear what is important to him. In a fictional conversation with the personified reason he expresses himself as follows: “Augustine: So I have prayed to God. Reason: What do you want to know then? A.: All that I have said in prayer. V.: Express it briefly. A.: God and the soul I want to know. V.: Nothing else? A.: Even nothing” (Augustine 1986, 19). Augustine has adhered to this concept. All other questions that occupy him, he discusses in view of God. This ranges from the idea of self-certainty over the question of the existence of the world, the origin of evil, the problem of freedom to the topic of grace and the rejection of sinners. In his book De libero arbitrio (On Free Will), which was written in the years 388 (Book I) and 391–395 (Books II and III), Augustine not only gives a proof of God, but above all deals with the problem of evil and free will. The work written in dialog form is opened by Evodius, Augustine’s conversation partner, with the words: “Please tell me if God is not the author of evil” (Augustine 2006, 75). The Latin word malum has a double meaning. It stands in German for both a physical and a moral bad, the evil. The background is the question: How is it possible that there is evil in the world at all, if we assume that God has created a good world? The proof of God presented in the first book can be represented as follows: The highest thing we know is the human mind. If there were something higher than this, it would be God. Now the truth is higher than the human mind, which is always only concerned with the truth. So “the truth itself is God” (ibid., 185). Now it is certain that as the creator of the world, God also has an all-encompassing knowledge and therefore a knowledge of the future (praescientia). From this the problem of the freedom of the will arises. Does man still have a freedom of choice if, on the basis of God’s foreknowledge, it is already clear now how he will act? Augustine answers this question with the remark that even man, who could predict the actions of

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another man with certainty on the basis of his knowledge, nevertheless does not influence the will of the latter. It is not the knowledge that is the cause of an action, but the decision of the acting person (cf. ibid., 219). Evidently, for Augustine, the thought is: “Nothing is more in our power than the will itself ” (ibid., 217) and, “since it is in our power, it is free for us” (ibid., 221). This has a decisive ethical consequence; because it means nothing less than “that man is happy who loves his good will” (ibid., 113). However, due to the freedom of will, man also has the freedom to sin. But why doesn’t God prevent the wrong use of freedom, or why did he give man freedom at all, since he knew beforehand that man would abuse freedom? Augustine answers the first question as follows: “They should not complain and not lament, for he did not force them to sin, since he created them and it was in their power whether they wanted to” (ibid., 227). To the second question he says that the world in which there are people with a free will is more perfect than one without them: “For even so they are still better than those creatures that cannot sin because they have no reasonable and free choice of will” (ibid., 229). So a man is more perfect than a horse, which can move but cannot sin, and this better than a stone, which cannot even move out of itself (cf. ibid.). But this raises a new question: doesn’t the world created by God lose perfection through the evil deeds of men? The answer is: The perfection of the world cannot consist in the fact that there are only perfect things in it, but it results from the “perfection of the whole” (ibid., 241), i.e. from the combination of perfect and imperfect things. It would be senseless to wish for two suns instead of sun and moon because the moon shines weaker than the sun (ibid.). Only from the combination of the different parts does the “beauty of the universe” (ibid., 243) result. Nevertheless, the question must be asked why man sins. Augustine names desire as the main cause. “Desire is, however, evil will. So evil will is the cause of all evil” (ibid., 271). But if someone asks about the causes of evil will, he would have to “ask again about their cause, and the questioning would never end” (ibid.). It is therefore sensible to accept the will itself as a “first cause”. The consequences of evil actions are more important. Whoever does not “act righteously loses the knowledge of what is right” (ibid., 275). The punishments are: “Ignorance and inability” (ibid.). And although man thereby violates his original nature, which was created for righteous action, the soul does not lose the ability to strive for this knowledge and “to perfect itself with the help of the creator and with pious zeal to acquire all virtues […], by which it is freed from the tormenting inability and from the blinding ignorance” (ibid., 279).

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The last question concerns small children who “have not sinned because of their age” but nevertheless have to experience physical pain or even death in some cases. When asked whether this is just, Augustine has two answers: On the one hand, these evils can be a punishment for the parents’ offenses or a test of their faith, and on the other hand, no one knows what good things God has “in his secret counsels for the children” (ibid., 295). In his confessions, written 397/98, his conversion experience from the year 386 forms the center of the book. It is the watershed that divides his life into the phase of sin and the phase of the fulfillment of his yearning for salvation. His life in sin also includes his relationships with his lovers and their whispers (cf. ibid., 212). In contrast to this is the commandment of chastity that the apostle Paul brought him. He is released from this struggle of the soul in a Milanese garden by the voice of a girl who urges him: “Take and read, take and read!” (ibid., 214). He opens any passage of the Holy Scriptures and reads: “Not in eating and drinking, not in chambers and fornication, not in strife and envy, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ and beware of fleshly lusts” (ibid., 215). This passage brings the decisive turning point for Augustine, not only with regard to the search for truth, but above all in ethical terms. Therefore he continues: “I wanted to read no further, did not need it either. For as soon as I had finished the sentence, the light of certainty flowed through my heart, and all the shadows of doubt were gone” (ibid.). Theologically, the confessions already belong to the way of thinking in the categories of grace. This also applies to his understanding of sin. In his work On Free Will, Augustine had still referred to infants as sinless, but now he repudiates this statement and declares all people to be sinners from birth. Categorically he says: “No one is pure before you from sin, not even a child who is not older than one day” (Augustine 1982, 38). Man is—according to Augustine—evil from childhood. He explains this thesis as follows: “With my own eyes I once saw and observed the jealousy of a little boy. He could not speak yet and looked pale, with a bitter expression on his milk brother” (ibid., 39). And even if mothers and nurses manage to wean their children from this vice, Augustine remains with the only rhetorical question: “But is that still innocence, to want to push away the hungry companion, who is entirely dependent on this food for his life, from the richly flowing milk source?” (ibid.). The sinful behavior cannot be derived from the natural need, but represents an expression of will that contradicts the original, good nature of man created by God. For this, Augustine gives another example. One night he and his companions had plundered a pear tree out of pure malice, but had left some of

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the pears lying around and thrown others to the pigs. The motive was the lust for sin. Augustine explains: “But I wanted to steal and stole, not driven by any need, but because justice was lacking and contrary to me and sin tempted me. For I stole what I myself had in abundance and much better, but I did not want to enjoy the stolen goods. But I wanted to enjoy the theft and the sin itself ” (ibid., 61). The work De civitate dei (On the City of God) represents Augustine’s last great engagement with ancient philosophy. His criticism of it is now more radical than ever. This applies to both the theoretical and the practical area. In the theoretical area, he is concerned with a new understanding of the world. For the ancient understanding—most clearly formulated by Heraclitus—the world is an eternal, neither created by a human being nor by a god, order (cosmos) that renews itself in its natural cycles again and again (cf. DK 22 B 30). But this understanding cannot be reconciled with the creation story of the Old Testament. Augustine explains: “Of all visible things, the world is the largest, of all invisible things God. But that a world exists, we see that God is, we believe. But that God created the world, we believe no one more safely than God. Where have we heard him? Nowhere better for the time being than in the Holy Scriptures, where his prophet speaks: ‘In the beginning God created heaven and earth’ “ (Augustine 1991, 6 f.). In the place of a cosmos, the idea of a historically to be understood world process with a temporally determined beginning and end arises. Man is part of this history set in motion by God and has to understand. But Augustine’s own understanding of the world has also changed. While he still speaks in his work On Free Will of the “beauty of the universe”, into which human imperfection, sin, pain and death fit to form a “perfection of the whole”, Augustine draws the human life in the darkest colors in the “City of God”. He begins with the bodily defects. He remarks: “Loss or weakness of limbs destroys the integrity of man, deformation his beauty, sickness his health, fatigue his strength” and continues: “What if the spine is so curved that the hands touch the ground and the man becomes, so to speak, a quadruped?” (ibid., 530). The following are the impairments of the soul. What if the senses with which we perceive and recognize fail in their service, if we become blind and deaf? And if there is even an illness of the mind and people “talk and do a lot of crazy stuff”, then “we can hardly or perhaps not at all contain the tears”, when we seriously consider this misery (ibid.). The virtue, however, which is so highly praised in Greek philosophy, sophrosyne, which commands us to keep measure and to restrain “the fleshly desires”, is not able to effectively fight them, because no one “has attained

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wisdom to such an extent that he no longer needs to fight against desires at all? […] As long as this weakness, this pest, this sickness is in us, how can we dare to claim that we are already healthy, and if not yet healthy, that we are even finally blessed!” (ibid., 532). But those who, in the face of all this misery, want to take their own lives, want to defeat one evil with an even greater evil, because they reverse the sense of courage, which consists in maintaining life in “patience” (ibid., 535). In the face of this misery, the complete failure of the many philosophical schools, which all claim to have found a way to happiness, is to be noted. But happiness is to be found neither in the bodily nor in the mental nor in the combination of both (cf. ibid., 517–529). Man is not, as the Stoics claim, able to endure adversities with composure. So Cicero wrote a moving consolation after the death of his daughter, but “the art of his speech” (ibid., 529) could not give him back the lost happiness. The conclusion that Augustine draws is: Happiness is not to be found in this life (see quotation). What remains is the willingness to patiently endure all the evils that surround us and, with Paulus, to hope for a “future world”. In it “will also be the final blessedness” (ibid., 536). He cannot influence his fate, because, in contrast to his book On Free Will, Augustine is now convinced that man has no free will. Although Adam originally had it, and he was even supposed to achieve “never-ending immortality” by obeying God’s commands; but if he, with the abuse of free will, arrogantly and disobediently offended his Lord, his God, he was destined to live an animal life, a slave of his lusts, and, after death, to fall into eternal damnation” (ibid., 99). This first sin and the associated fate are passed on to all his descendants. All people are marked by original sin from their birth. They are all guilty (cf. ibid., 124). But in his unsearchable grace, God has exempted a few “elect” from just condemnation and promised them eternal life; they belong to the “state of God”. But all others belong to those “rejected” by God. They cannot free themselves from this state by any moral effort. As a model for the idea of graceful choice, Augustine can refer to a passage by Paulus, in which he lets God say: “I have loved Jakob, but Esau I have hated” (Rom. 9,13) and that, as Paulus emphasizes: “Before the children were born and had done neither good nor evil” (ibid., 9,11). Augustine radicalizes this thought: According to him, with the creation of the first man, God has already formed two “communities, as it were two states”, because “from that first all men were to arise, according to God’s hidden but just judgment, partly as companions of the evil angels condemned, partly as companions of the good eternally rewarded” (ibid., 106).

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In view of ethics it can be said: In Augustine’s concept, reason is increasingly replaced by faith. In this concept there is no room for free will, for a happy life, for moral action. For this reason, his theses were weakened in the history of theology. It was not until Luther that he picked up the thread again.

2 Reason and Grace (Thomas von Aquin) “But since being is the first thing that is grasped at all, so good is the first thing grasped by practical reason […]. But since good has the sense of purpose and evil the sense of the opposite, reason recognizes everything to which man has a natural inclination […]. Therefore, the order of the commandments of natural law is based on the order of natural inclinations. First of all, man has an inclination towards a good corresponding to his nature, in which he agrees with all substances; it consists in the fact that each substance desires the preservation of its being, as befits its nature. According to this inclination, it is part of natural law to preserve the life of man, while the opposite is forbidden. Secondly, man has an inclination […], which he shares with other living beings. Therefore, one counts as natural law, ‘what nature has taught all living beings’, such as the connection of male and female, the education of offspring and similar. In a third sense, man has an inclination towards the good corresponding to his rational nature, which is peculiar to him: Thus man is inclined by nature to recognize the truth about God and to live in society.” (Thomas von Aquin: Opera omnia Bd. 7. Summa theologica. Rom 1892. In: Flasch 1988, 324 f.) Thomas Aquinas (1224/25–1274) is born at the Roccasecca Castle near Aquino, in the vicinity of Naples, as the son of an aristocratic family. In 1239 he studies at the University of Naples and, in addition to theological instruction, receives an introduction to Greek philosophy, including Aristotle’s. At the age of twenty he joins the Dominican Order. This is followed by study years in Paris. Here he meets Albertus Magnus (1200–1280), who tries to connect Greek philosophy, and above all Aristotle’s, with theology. He follows his teacher to Cologne. In 1256 he becomes a Magister at the University of Paris and, from 1258 on, begins his work Summa contra Gentiles. After three years of teaching, he returns to Italy. At the papal court he meets Wilhelm von Moerbeke, who translates Aristotle’s works for him. From 1269 to 1272 he is again in Paris. This is the time when he wrote his

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Summa Theologiae. From 1272 Thomas is again in Italy and now takes part in the Order’s studies at the University of Naples. He dies in 1274 on the journey to the Council of Lyon in the Cistercian monastery at Fossanova (cf. Kenny o. J.; Pleger 2018, 48–52). The relationship between faith and reason (fides et ratio) is also at the center of Thomas’s thinking. But due to the now known writings of Aristotle, it took on a completely new meaning compared to Augustine. While in the Latin-speaking West only individual logical writings of Aristotle were known until 1200, the Arabic world had a complete translation of Aristotle’s works available since the middle of the tenth century. Abu Ali ibn Sid (980–1037), who lived in Baghdad and was called Avicenna in the West, and Ibn Rushd (1126–1198), called Averroes, who lived in Arabic-dominated Cordoba, wrote important Aristotle commentaries. Aristotle’s Physics and Metaphysics were not taught at the Faculty of Arts in Paris until 1210, and a complete Latin translation of Aristotle’s works was not available until around 1240. But the irritation that Aristotle caused for the official doctrine of the Catholic Church was so great that the Pope prohibited the reading of Aristotle for the first time in 1210, again in 1231 and for the last time in 1263 (cf. Kenny o. J., 35 f.). For Albertus Magnus and for Thomas, the study of Aristotle led to a new definition of the relationship between philosophy and theology. The starting point for Thomas is the reason that naturally belongs to humans. He recognizes its special importance in the confrontation with “heathens” and other religions, for which the Bible is not the binding truth. His remarkable consequence is: “Therefore it is necessary to resort to natural reason, which everyone is forced to agree with” (Thomas v. A. 2013 a, 7). However, reason cannot do everything, because it is “deficient with regard to divine things” (ibid.). Human reason is limited and beyond its realm begins the realm of faith, which is a gift of grace. For their relationship to each other, Thomas develops the memorable formula gratia perficit naturam, i.e. grace perfects the striving for truth and goodness that lies in human nature but is imperfect (cf. Thomas v. A. 1985 I, 16). He says: “The gifts of grace are added to nature in such a way that they do not abolish it, but rather perfect it. Therefore, the light of faith, which flows into us by grace, does not extinguish the light of natural knowledge, which is our natural gift” (Thomas v. A. 1946, 116). The new confidence in the powers of human reason and philosophy also led to a renewed attempt at proofs of God. Thomas develops his own proof of God in five ways (quinque viae): The first proof is based on the experience that there is something that is moved. But everything that is moved must be moved by something. The

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first unmoved mover is God. Thomas takes the idea of the unmoved mover from Metaphysics by Aristotle and thus testifies to his proximity to him. The second proof refers to the origin of reality: Everything given in reality has a cause; there is a causa efficiens for every being. Only the first cause is not caused itself, it is causa sui, i.e. cause of itself – and that is God. The third proof deals with the relationship between reality, possibility and necessity. We encounter, Thomas explains, things that come into being and pass away, sometimes are, sometimes are not. “But it is impossible for all such things to always be, because what has the possibility of not being, is sometimes not. If, therefore, everything is in the possibility of not being, then at some time nothing was there of things. But if that is true, then there would be nothing today, because what is not, only begins to be by something that is” (Thomas v. A. 1985, I, 24). But this one, he concludes, can only be necessary, and that is God. The fourth proof distinguishes the perfect from the imperfect. But in order to recognize the imperfect as imperfect, we need a standard, and that is the perfect itself. Thomas concludes: “There is therefore something that is the cause of being and goodness and every perfection of all beings: and we call it God” (ibid., 25). This proof is eminently Platonic. Plato designates this perfect being as an idea. The fifth proof is based on the idea of purposefulness found in nature. We must assume this, even if the things themselves lack the knowledge of a goal. That which strives towards a goal without its own knowledge cannot have it within itself. Therefore, in nature “there is a reasonable being from which all natural things are ordered towards a goal: and we call it God” (ibid., 25). This proof picks up on the Aristotelian idea of teleology, that is, the causa finalis. The conclusion is that the following statements apply to the nature of God: God is (1) the unmoved mover, the beginning of all movement, he is (2) the cause of all being, including man, he is (3) the only necessarily existing being, he is (4) the perfect being, and finally (5) the goal of all striving. He is the beginning, standard, and goal of creation, but he himself is not a being, not even a first or highest. God surpasses all beings. He is being itself. As such, it cannot be compared to a being. All talk about being, and thus about God, is inadequate. It only has the character of analogy (cf. Kenny n.d. 24). At the same time, however, it also becomes clear that the being of beings has its origin in God. Since God is being itself, creation means bringing something forth from nothing into being. Creation is creatio ex nihilo. This distinguishes Thomas from Greek philosophy, which emphasized the eternity of the world, as Aristotle did in general.

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Thomas himself points out this difference, and it speaks for his intellectual integrity that he expressly characterizes the creation thought as a matter of faith. He emphasizes that the concept of an uncreated, eternal world cannot be refuted by reasonable arguments. In his Summa Theologiae Thomas formulates the objection of natural reason as follows: “But it is a matter of faith that God is the creator of the world in such a way that the world has begun to exist […]. Alone with faith it is held fast, and it cannot be proven that the world has not always been” (Thomas of Aquin 1985, I, 209). But this does not make the existence of God superfluous; For the thought of the eternity of the world does not yet guarantee its continued existence. Thomas solves this problem by the thought of a creatio continua. He says: “The preservation of things from God is not due to a new activity, but by the continuation of the activity which gives being, an activity indeed, which is without movement and time” (ibid., 361). The basis of anthropology for Thomas is the biblical teaching that man is a creature of God. But in determining his essence he turns to the Aristotelian definition. Man is a animal rationale (zoon logon echon). And as for Aristotle it is also for Thomas every living being is animated. The decisive factor is the thought that the soul forms the body. As the form of the body, it holds it together (cf. Landmann 1962, 116). For all living beings, the soul is the principle of life. It has a hierarchical structure. With the animals, four stages connect man: the vegetative (vegetative), the sensitive (sensory perceptions), the appetitive (instinct-guided) and the motile (spatial movement). The human soul is also characterized by its intellectual, purely spiritual ability. It includes thinking and free will (cf. Hirschberger I, 1979, 511). The “spiritual soul” (anima intellectiva) also includes the ability of reflection. It is not bound to sensuality, but has independence from it. It is a substance and for this reason immortal. In addition to the theological premise of the creation and preservation of the world by God, two further premises must be considered in order to assess human action. The first states that the world created by God is good. Thomas refers to the creation story of the Bible, in which it says: “And God saw everything he had made, and behold, it was very good” (Gen. 1, 31). The second premise is that everything created, animate and inanimate, is ordered towards God. It represents an explanation of the fifth ‘way’ of his proof of God, which interprets the world teleologically. Even “the heavenly body” and all other natural bodies are oriented towards a goal that was set by God. Thomas explains this thought as follows: “It is therefore easy to see how natural bodies, without having knowledge, are active and active for the sake of a goal. They strive for the goal because they are directed towards the

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goal by a substance that knows, in which the arrow strives towards the target, directed by the shooter” (Thomas v. A. 2013 b, 95). This means “that every activity is active for the sake of a goal” (ibid., 13). But the goal of all activity, that towards which everything moves, is the good itself. It finds its highest perfection in God. The good world that God created is the totality of being, i.e. everything that is, is good. It follows: If being is good, then evil, which represents a contrast to the good, cannot be a being. Evil has no own essence. But what is evil then? Thomas answers: “Evil as such is the privation of the good” (ibid., 33). It is a lack of being, just as blindness is a lack of vision (cf. ibid., 37). This means that the good has an absolute priority over the evil. Evil can only be talked about because there is good. Even more. Thomas even says: “Therefore evil is caused by good” (ibid., 39). He explains this thought by taking up an example from Aristotle: So the throwing of goods into the sea is something bad, but it has a good cause, namely the intention to save a ship in distress (cf. ibid., 25 ff.). But why is there anything bad at all, why are there deficiencies in the good world created by God? Thomas’s answer varies the one already given by Augustine. Evil is necessary because in many cases good “would have no place at all if there were no evil: for example, the patience of the just would not exist if there were no malice of the persecutors; and the place for punishing justice would not exist if there were no sin; also, in natural things, the generation of one thing would not exist if the corruption of another did not exist. Therefore, if the divine providence completely excluded evil from the whole of things, the multitude of good would necessarily be diminished” (ibid., 307). Following thoughts from the early work of Augustine, Thomas ends his consideration with a hymn to the beauty of the cosmos. He says: “But if evil were removed from certain parts of the universe, much of the perfection of the universe would be lost, whose beauty arises from the orderly union of evil and good” (ibid.). Nevertheless, God is not himself the author of evil. He guarantees the good overall order by allowing evil. The explanation for this is provided by the concept of “secondary causes” (ibid., 303). God is the first cause of the world as its creator. But from this first cause all further events do not necessarily follow, as a strict causal thinking would suggest. God has rather created a space of freedom with the creation of the world. This is an act of grace, because “this does not arise from any inadequacy of the divine power, but from the immeasurable goodness by which he wanted to communicate his likeness to things: not only in so far as they are, but also in so far as they are causes of other things: in these two ways, namely, all creatures together

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achieve likeness to God” (ibid.). The created things therefore have a double likeness to God: on the one hand through their mere being, on the other hand through their creative activities. Thomas does not represent the thesis that the secondary causes form their own causal determined event chain among themselves. Rather, he opposes the idea of strict necessity. He says that since “there are causes which can be and also not be, because they can be hindered, so that they do not produce their effects, it is evident that it would be contrary to the very nature of providence if everything happened of necessity” (ibid., 313). For this reason, neither the freedom of the will nor the secondary causes are directly affected by providence, because “it belongs rather to the divine providence to preserve the freedom of the will than the being and not being able to be in natural causes” (ibid., 315). The reason for this is that by the abolition of the free will “a thing would be deprived of that by which it attains the divine likeness. But that which acts voluntarily attains the divine likeness in that it is free to act” (ibid.). The emphasis on free will has immediate ethical consequences. Although man is also burdened by original sin according to Thomas. In his Summa Theologiae he expresses this unambiguously: “According to Catholic belief […] it must be held that the first sin of the first man is inherited by his descendants. […] Therefore, the sin that flows down from the first progenitor to his descendants is called ‘original sin’” (Thomas of Aquin 1985, II, 408 ff.). Original sin finds its essential expression in human “concupiscence” (ibid., 414). Nevertheless, man has the possibility, due to his free will, to choose between good and evil. Moreover, it applies: “If the freedom of the will were eliminated, much good would be lost. For the praise of human virtue would be eliminated, which is not if man does not act freely. Also the justice of the rewarding and punishing would be eliminated, if man would not do good or evil freely” (Thomas of Aquin 2013 b, 315 ff.). The consequence of the denial of free will would be that “advice, admonitions, regulations, prohibitions, rewards and punishments would be in vain” (Thomas of Aquin 1977, 91). The freedom of the will is a human privilege. It does not belong to inanimate objects or animals. However, Thomas shows that there is a sequence of increasing freedom in the world’s creation order. He says: “To see this, note that some things act without judgment, like the stone that moves downward, and also everything that lacks knowledge. But some beings act with judgment, but with no free judgment, like irrational animals. For when the sheep sees the wolf, it judges with natural, not free judgment, that he is to be avoided […]. But man is active with judgment, because he judges with his

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knowledge that something is to be avoided or sought” (ibid.). The center of free will lies in the reason of man and the associated power of judgment. The will is the tool with which man executes what he has decided on the basis of his ‘free judgment’ (liberum arbitrium). Freedom and reason condition each other. Man is free because he is a rational being (cf. Kluxen 1964, 207). Just as there is a hierarchy of things, both animate and inanimate, so too there is a hierarchy among human beings. Natural bodies, such as stones, living beings endowed with a soul, such as plants and animals, and finally human beings, who are endowed with a rational soul and free will, are all in a natural, hierarchical order. In accordance with the principle that everything that exists strives towards a goal, this natural striving manifests itself in different ways at different levels of this hierarchy. Human beings, who are at the highest level of created things, contain the lower levels within themselves. Therefore, like every substance, they desire the preservation of their being. Secondly, like all living beings, they desire to reproduce and to provide for their offspring. Finally, and this is what sets them apart from all other beings, they desire, in accordance with their rational nature, the good. This includes “recognizing the truth about God” and “living in society” (see quotation). The final goal of their striving is their happiness. They do not find it in “carnal lust”, “fame”, “wealth”, “worldly power”, or even “in acts of moral virtue”. The final happiness of human beings lies “in the contemplation of truth” (Thomas 2013 b, 137). But since God is the truth, the goal of human beings can also be formulated as follows: “The final Happiness of Human beings consists in the Contemplation Of God” (ibid.). Thomas is in agreement with Augustine that this goal cannot be achieved in this life (cf. ibid., 189). The great difference is that Thomas values freedom and reason anew. The reception history of Thomas Aquinas is varied. After his death, several of his propositions were condemned as heretical (cf. Kenny n.d., 49). In the fourteenth century, his doctrine was overshadowed by Scotism and Nominalism. In the sixteenth century, with the rise of the Jesuits, there was a new interest in him, and in the nineteenth century he was declared an authoritative teacher for the Catholic Church with the rise of Neo-Thomism.

3 ‘Faith Alone’ (Luther/Kierkegaard) “How does it happen that faith alone justifies and, without any works, bestows such abundant wealth, when the Holy Scriptures prescribe for us so many laws, commandments, works, estates, and ways of conduct? Here

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one must take care and indeed hold fast with earnestness that faith alone, without any works, makes righteous, free, and blessed […]. And one must know that the whole Holy Scriptures are divided into two kinds of words: there are the commandments (or laws) of God, and the promises (or assurances). The commandments teach and prescribe for us various good works, but they are not yet done. They indicate what one ought to do, but they do not help; they teach what one should do, but they do not give the power to do it. Therefore they are intended only to make the person see his inability to do good and to despair of himself; and therefore they are also called the Old Testament and all belong to the Old Testament. For example, the commandment: ‘You shall not covet’ (Exodus 20:17) proves that we are all sinners and that no person can be without evil desire, no matter what he does. From this he learns to despair of himself and to seek help from elsewhere, in order to be without evil desire and thus to fulfill the commandment with the help of another, because he cannot do it from himself. In the same way, all the other commandments are impossible for us.” (Martin Luther: On the Freedom of a Christian Man. In: Calwer LutherEdition. Vol. 2. Calw, 1996, 166) Martin Luther (1483–1546), born in Eisleben, learned about the Aristotelian philosophy during his studies at the Faculty of Arts in Erfurt and began studying jurisprudence there in 1505. Impressed by a terrible thunderstorm, he decides to become a monk. He enters the Augustinian monastery in Erfurt and receives priestly ordination in 1507. In 1512 he is awarded a doctorate in theology in Wittenberg. Disappointed by Aristotelian philosophy, he intensively studies the anti-Pelagian writings of Augustine as well as his doctrine of original sin, predestination, and grace. Since 1516 he learns Greek and Hebrew. He increasingly criticizes scholastic theology. The first official result of this confrontation are the 95 theses against the sale of indulgences, which he published in 1517. The process against him, conducted by the emperor and the pope, can only be ended by his escape to the Wartburg with the help of the Saxon Elector Frederick the Wise. In 1522 Luther returns to Wittenberg and devotes a large part of his time to the translation of the Bible into German. He participates in the organization of the Reformation and takes a critical position on the increased peasant uprisings. He dies in 1546 in Eisleben (cf. Bainton 1971; Feldmann 2016). While Thomas Aquinas, inspired by the Aristotelian philosophy, tries to achieve a philosophically-theological synthesis of thinking of his time, which not only incorporates the heterogeneous elements of the Old and the

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New Testament, but also the teachings of the Church Fathers and the philosophical currents of his time, Luther breaks not only with the scholastic tradition, but also with philosophy. The reconciliation of faith and reason, which Thomas strived for, is again repudiated by Luther. He dismisses reason as a possibility of theoretical and practical orientation in the world and highlights faith as the only instance for human salvation (sola fide). In unusual sharpness he criticizes the Aristotle, highly valued by Thomas. He says: “It hurts me in my heart that the damned, arrogant, deceitful heathen has seduced and deceived so many of the best Christians with his false words because of our sin” (Luther 2012, 84). But his rejection of philosophy goes further. It affects reason in general. He emphasizes, “that the reason of the devil’s whore is nothing but to listen and to slander everything that God says and does” (Luther WA 18, 164; cf. WA 51, 129). But his criticism also affects the scholastic theology and the church practice of his time. The formulation sola fide not only refers to the rejection of reason, but also to the “good works” required by church doctrine. He pointedly presents this thought in his work On the Freedom of a Christian Man (1520). The starting point are his two theses: “A Christian man is a free lord over all things and subject to no one. / A Christian man is a dutiful servant of all things and subject to everyone” (Luther Vol. 2, 162). Luther solves this apparent contradiction by referring to the two “natures” that every Christian has in himself, “a spiritual and a bodily. In view of the soul he is called a spiritual, new, inner man; in view of flesh and blood he is called a bodily, old and external man” (ibid.). The possession and use of external things cannot give man the freedom, only the “faith makes free, because it receives justice in Christ’s promise” (ibid., 164). But man is not justified by the so-called “good works” or by the attempt to observe the numerous prohibitions and commandments expressed in the Bible. The reason is that man is not able to keep the commandments. So no one can claim to be “without evil desire”. Therefore, all commandments have the sole purpose “that man may see his inability to do good in them and despair of himself ” (cf. quotation). It is the despair “of oneself ”, of all one’s own actions, that opens the possibility of faith to man. It is based on the “promise and agreement of God” expressed in the New Testament. After Luther has spoken about the inner freedom of the Christian, he comes to speak about the “servitude of the Christian” in the second part. He first emphasizes that the insignificance of “good works” for the salvation of humanity does not justify inaction; for as an “external man” he remains bound to his body and to life with his fellow human beings. This means two things: On the one hand, “the body must be trained by fasting, watching,

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working […] to become obedient and congruent with the inner man and the faith” (ibid., 175). On the other hand, the Christian’s relationship to his fellow human being is not determined by the idea of merit, but by acts of love, which are a fruit of faith. They take place “out of pure freedom for nothing. He is not looking for anything for his benefit […], but he only wants to please God in it” (ibid., 179). Questions of a political ethic are addressed by Luther in his writing Of worldly authority. How far one is obliged to obey it from the year 1523. In it he explains the idea of his so-called two-kingdom doctrine as follows: “Here we have to divide Adam’s children, that is, all people, into two parts: those belonging to the kingdom of God, the others to the kingdom of the world” (Luther Vol. 4, 18). Those who belong to the kingdom of God are all “truly believing”. They are the righteous, who even suffer injustice voluntarily. They live in Christ and “do not need a worldly sword”. “The unrighteous, on the other hand, do not do anything that is right; Therefore, they need the right, which teaches, compels and urges them to do good” (ibid., 19). But since no human being is “a Christian by nature”, but all sinners are, only “few are believers and only the smaller part behaves in a Christian way” (ibid., 20). Also, not everyone who calls himself a Christian is truly believing; for “the world and the masses are and remain unchristian, even if they are all baptized and called Christians” (ibid., 21). In order to control injustice and evil among people, “God has ordained the two regimes: the spiritual, which creates Christians and righteous people […] and the worldly, which protects the un-Christians and evil from being externally Peace” (ibid., 21). God himself has established the worldly regime. Luther relies on Paulus, whom he quotes as follows: “The authority is from God” (ibid., 29; cf. Rom. 13,1). This means that “the exercise of power and the sword […] is a worship” (ibid., 34). For this reason, every Christian owes obedience to the authorities. The subjects must suffer if “the order is given to run through their houses and take books or goods by force” (ibid., 43). Luther expresses himself very critically about the moral quality of the princes. He says: “They are generally the biggest fools or the worst villains on earth” (ibid., 43). Nevertheless, he does not exclude the possibility that a prince can also be a Christian (cf. ibid., 49). In general, it is true that the authorities are not allowed to command everything. They have a limit where they intervene in matters of conscience. Luther emphasizes: “The secular government has laws that do not extend further than the body and property and what else are external things on earth. For over the soul, God wants no one to rule but himself alone” (ibid., 36). If, therefore, the authorities want to wage an unjust war, for example,

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the people are not obliged to follow them, because one must “obey God […] more than men” (ibid., 56). However, this does not allow for the deduction of an active right of resistance, because—as Luther—“the authorities should not be resisted with violence, but only with the confession of the truth. If they turn to it, it is good; otherwise you are not guilty and suffer injustice for the sake of God” (ibid., 55). In the years 1524/25, Luther once again deals with the problem of freedom. It becomes the subject of a dispute with Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466/69–1536). Erasmus, the learned humanist and believing Catholic, was considered the leading scholar of his time until the appearance of the church-critical Luther, who had set himself the task of developing a Christianity newly founded on the sources of the Bible and the Church Fathers. From this approach, he was supposed to, pressured by the Catholic Church, seek theological confrontation with Luther. Erasmus fulfilled this task, although only hesitantly, by writing a treatise entitled De libero arbitrio (1524) (cf. Erasmus 1995, Vol. 4, IX ff.). He thus hit upon a central point in Luther’s thinking. While in Luther’s writing Von der Freiheit eines Christenmenschen (On the freedom of a Christian ) the freedom of the Christian is emphasized as liberation from the necessity of ‘good works’, the problem is discussed in an even more radical sense with the question of free will. The starting point is now the doctrine of predestination by Augustine and the teaching of Wycliffe (1330–1384), who had advocated the thesis of the absolute necessity of all events (“Omnia de necessitate absoluta eveniunt”; ibid., 19 note). Luther has adopted both teachings. Erasmus gives his definition of freedom at the beginning of his writing. He says: We understand “the free will as a power of human will, by which the human being can turn to what leads to eternal salvation, or could turn away from it” (ibid., 37). As a man of tolerance and balance, he tries to mediate between the extremes of absolute free will and the thesis of absolute necessity with this definition. He emphasizes that a complete denial of free will would not be acceptable, as it would lead to a position that is not defensible theologically. He says: Those who “deny that there is a free will at all, but claim that everything happens out of absolute necessity, confess that in all things God not only works the good works, but also the evil ones, from which it seems to follow that, as the human being can not be called the author of good works in any respect, he can also in no way be called the author of evil works” (ibid.,179). On the other hand, he admits that the human power of judgement has been weakened by the fall of man. The human will can only do something if God comes to help. The free will acts in the interplay of own effort and

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divine grace. Erasmus makes this clear with an example. He compares man to a child “who has fallen because it can not walk yet” (ibid., 175). The father helps him, supports him, guides him and thus enables him to reach the apple placed in front of him. Erasmus hoped in vain to win Luther’s agreement with this mediating position. Luther replies to Erasmus’s treatise with his work “De servo arbitrio”, published in 1525, which is usually translated as “On the Unfree Will”. He makes it clear that he takes an extreme position and is not willing to make any compromises. He says that “the free will is a pure lie” (Luther 1961, 154) and develops this thought as follows: “Everything we do, everything that happens, even if it seems to happen changeably and randomly, still happens necessarily and unchangeably if you look at the will of God” (ibid., 172) and a little later: “It is therefore certain and remains an irrefutable fact: everything happens out of necessity” (ibid., 174). Foresight and predestination are identical for God. For Luther it is not only about the moral question of whether man is able from himself to “do good works”, nor about whether he is at least able to do evil, as Augustine had considered (cf. ibid., 236), but about the absolute necessity of all events. He expressly agrees with the religious determinism of Wycliffe (cf. ibid., 236 and 264). This means that man himself is ultimately “guided by the free will of God” even in the use of minor things like “money and possessions” (ibid., 200). Although Luther seems to make a concession to Erasmus when he says: “You can quite rightly allow a certain degree of free choice to man” (ibid., 226). But he himself lifts up his thought again when he emphasizes that in reality the demanding concept of freedom is quite inappropriate here and the expression “free will” should be replaced by “changeable” or “variable will” (ibid.). The conclusion is: For Luther there is no doubt that “the free will belongs to no one but God alone” (ibid., 226). This means: “If this title is attributed to men, it is done with no more right than if they were also given divinity. Greater than this blasphemy can but no be” (ibid., 198). For him, man has no free will because of the predestined necessity of all events. He says: “So the human will is placed in the middle (between God and Satan) like a draft animal. If God has sat on it, he wants and goes where God wants […]. If Satan has sat on it, he wants and goes where Satan wants. And it is not in his free choice to run to one of the riders […], but the riders themselves fight each other to get and possess him” (ibid., 196). Although Satan is “creation and work of God” (ibid., 277), nevertheless God leaves him a realm of dominion; for everyone can know that “this world is the kingdom of Satan” (ibid., 221). And so it is to be understood that man is “not only bound, miserable, captive, sick and dead […], but also under the

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influence of his prince, Satan, adds to all this misery the blindness by which he considers himself free, happy, redeemed, powerful, healthy and alive. For Satan knows very well that if man were to recognize his misery, he could not keep anyone in his kingdom, because God would have pity on him who sees his misery and cries to him and help him immediately” (ibid., 237). But man cannot recognize his desperate situation and therefore cannot cry for help. Luther turns to the doctrine of predestination by Augustine to describe the human situation. This means: There are “chosen” and “abandoned” by God (ibid., 276). No one can improve their lives from themselves, but the “chosen and righteous will be improved by the Holy Spirit, the others will go unredeemed to destruction” (ibid., 192). They belong to the “scum” (cf. ibid.). In contrast, the “righteous and chosen will have the gate of justice and the entrance to heaven and the way to God opened to them” (ibid.). Likewise, the omnipotence of God causes the “godless can not but always err and sin, because him, torn from the drive of the divine omnipotence, to be idle is not allowed, but he must will, desire and act, just as he is” (ibid., 277). The departure from his sinful conduct is denied to the godless. Luther’s strange, paradoxical justification is: “God can not set aside his omnipotence for the sake of the withdrawal of that will. So it happens that he continually and necessarily must sin and err” (ibid., 278). More: God himself brings about the sinful attitude. The example discussed by Luther is in the Old Testament. There it says: “The Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh” (ibid., 265, cf. Exodus 9.12). The question that arises in the face of the existence of evil on the one hand and the omnipotence of God on the other hand, is posed by Luther himself. He says: “But why does he not change the evil will at once, which he moves?” (ibid., 280) and answers: “This is one of the mysteries of the divine majesty, in which his decisions are incomprehensible: And it is not our task to want to know this, but rather to worship these mysteries. […] He is God, and for his will there is no cause or reason that could be prescribed to him as a guideline and measure” (ibid., 280). Luther admits that it is” unreasonable “if one takes the reason as a judge,” that God, although he “can not want the good and necessarily serves the sin, yet it is still counted as his guilt” (ibid., 274). But reason is not the judge; the “mysteries” of God are a matter of faith. The conclusion is therefore: There is no balance between reason and faith. Finally, it is noteworthy that Luther names his personal motive for the rejection of free will. He says: “I confess truly with regard to myself: If it were somehow possible, I would not want a free will to be given to me […].

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For my conscience would, if I also lived and worked forever, never be certain and safe, how much it would have to do, so that it does enough to God” (ibid., 326 f.). Freedom meant for him not that he felt “happy, redeemed, powerful, healthy and alive”. It scares him. Despite Luther’s rejection of reason and freedom, he did not advocate political quietism. On the contrary, the justification by faith opened up the possibility of a political theology with far-reaching practical consequences for him. It allowed him to advocate violence in the name of God. Thus, towards heretics and “unbelievers”, which also included the Jews, he developed a remarkable intolerance. In 1523 he still believed that the Jews could convert to Christianity, but over time his rejection of them grew stronger and stronger. In his work On the Jews and Their Lies from 1543, it culminates in hatred. He lumped them together with the devil. For Christians, it is a matter of “saving our souls from the Jews, that is: from the devil and eternal death” (Luther WA 53, 536). His religiously motivated demand is: “That their synagogue be burned down with fire, and that whoever can, throw sulphur and pitch […]. Secondly, that all their books be taken from them, prayer books, Talmuds, also the whole Bible, and not a leaf be left […]. Thirdly, that they be forbidden to praise, thank, pray, or teach God publicly among us and in our midst, under penalty of loss of life and limb” (ibid.). He expressed himself just as radically towards the uprising of the peasants, who, as part of the Reformation, also hoped for greater freedom from feudal dependence. While Thomas Müntzer sided with them and was executed for it (cf. Bloch 1977, GA 2, 81), Luther in his work Against the Robbing and Murdering Hordes of Peasants from 1525 called on the princes to kill the rebellious peasants. “A time has come when a prince can earn heaven with bloodthirstiness better than others with prayer” (WA 18, 361). He demands: “Strike, slash, strangle here, whoever can, if you stay dead, well for you, you will never come across a more blessed death, because you die in obedience to God’s word” (ibid.). This call to violence is also religiously justified by him with reference to the Bible (Rom. 13,1–5). The third example concerns the “witches” and “wizards”. Luther refers to the Old Testament, which already demands their death. The argument, which is often heard in the present, that religiously motivated violence is an abuse of religion, is not tenable. In his so-called “witch sermon” of March 11, 1526, Luther was able to expressly refer to a biblical passage in which two cases of the commandment to kill in the name of God are mentioned. It reads in his translation: “Thou shalt not let the witches live. Whoever lies with an animal shall die” (Ex. 22,17). After Luther had extensively explained

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the “crimes” of the “witches”, starting with the fact that they steal milk, butter and everything from a house up to the fact that they can enchant a child, he emphasized that it is in the highest degree in accordance with justice to kill them. He demands unambiguously: “Therefore they shall be killed” (“Ideo occidantur”; WA 16, 551). Remarkably, witchcraft was mainly attributed to women, as the “Hexenhammer” published in 1486 shows (cf. Kramer 2013, 236 ff.). Thousands of women were tortured and killed. This reveals a particularly misogynistic aspect of this religiously motivated violence (cf. Behringer 2010). The idea of humanity and human rights, which was already developed in Hellenism, was repeatedly nullified in acts of religious fanaticism in the Middle Ages and at the beginning of the Modern Age. It is not a backwardness of historical development, but a relapse into barbarism towards already achieved reason. Luther’s reception history in the field of ethics is ambivalent. On the one hand, he strengthened the authority of conscience against church and state violence. This is a lasting merit (cf. Danz 2015, 129). However, in his opinion, conscience does not have to justify itself to reason, but to a God whose ways remain incomprehensible. The examination of conscience thus becomes an infinite task that leads to no certainty. This task forms the basis for the Protestant ethic (cf. Weber, Chap. XI, 1). The rejection of reason and the sole reference to the biblical God have the consequence that religiously motivated violence is not excluded by Luther. He did not invent it, but he also did not condemn it. It has not only unfolded its ideological power in the Thirty Years’ War, but also in the present—under new religious and confessional signs. The topics of freedom, sin, despair, reason and faith remain central to Protestant thought even after Luther. This is shown by a look at Kierkegaard (1813–1855). He first completes a theology degree at the University of Copenhagen, but then decides against a church teaching career. As a result of his engagement with Hegel’s philosophy and German Romanticism, he was awarded a doctorate in philosophy in 1841. After a stay in Berlin, where he heard, among others, Schelling, he began his work as a writer. His writings appear in tireless succession. He died in 1855 after a stroke (cf. Rohde 1990). With his thinking, Kierkegaard already belongs to the post-idealist philosophy. While Hegel still represented an idealism that trusted the idea to penetrate and shape reality, this identity broke down after his death (1831). The Left Hegelians, to which, in addition to Feuerbach and Marx, Kierkegaard also belongs, are suspicious of the idea of the universality claim of reason and philosophy. They are looking for the all-decisive reality. While

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Feuerbach seeks to find it in the transformation of theology into anthropology, Marx sees it in the material production conditions of society. Kierkegaard, on the other hand, makes the concrete existence of the individual human being the center of his thinking. From him—so his accusation—the philosophy abstracts, which always moves in the medium of universality. Therefore, it remains abstract. It abstains “from the concrete, from temporality, from the becoming of existence, from the need of the existing: namely, that this is composed of the eternal and the temporal, set in existence” (Kierkegaard 1989, 1). But can one speak of the existence of the individual without also losing oneself in the general? Kierkegaard’s answer is: Yes, but only in a paradoxical way, because on the one hand it could seem that “there is something that cannot be thought: existence. But then the difficulty is again that existence sets it together by the fact that the thinker exists” (ibid., 9). Existentialism, of which Kierkegaard is called the father, thematizes the existing thinker and the ways of existence chosen by him. In his first major work entitled Either - Or (1843), Kierkegaard sets two ways of existence against each other: the aesthetic and the ethical. The aesthetic is oriented towards enjoyment. But this way of existence leads to despair, because the existing one remains inner and outer dependent on the objects of his desire. If the existing one becomes aware of his desperate situation, he can develop a distance to himself and thus gain freedom. He recognizes that he can choose himself absolutely; “for I am myself the Absolute, because only myself can I choose absolutely, and this absolute choice of myself is my freedom, and only by choosing myself absolutely, have I set an absolute difference, namely between good and evil” (Kierkegaard 2014, 783). But freedom leads to ambivalence. It results from the possibility of evil. With the choice of evil, guilt and remorse arise, categories that open up the dimension of the religious. In his treatise Fear and Trembling published in 1843, the tense relationship of the Ethical to the Religious is discussed on the example of the ‘Sacrifice of Isaac’ (Gen. 22, 1–14) (cf. Gardiner n.d., 75). The demand for a universally valid ethic and God’s command to Abraham, to sacrifice his own son can no longer be mediated. Kierkegaard formulates this paradox in all clarity. He says: “The ethical expression for what Abraham did is that he wanted to kill Isaac, the religious one is that he wanted to sacrifice Isaac; but in this contradiction lies precisely the fear that can deprive a man of sleep, and yet Abraham would not be who he is without this fear” (W III, 26). Abraham’s fear is the fear of being guilty of the death of his own child, the fear of disobeying God’s command, the fear of moving away from human community with his action, and the fear of possibly misunderstanding God’s

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command and, instead of following the truth, falling into “madness”. From this fear nobody can free him. The action of faith, which cannot be ethically justified, isolates the human being. It throws him back on himself and his untenable relationship to God. Kierkegaard remarks on this: If I “should think about Abraham, then I am like destroyed. Every moment I then have that immense paradox in front of me, which is the content of Abraham’s life […]. But I do not mean at all that faith is something small, but on the contrary, it is the highest” (ibid., 29). In his book The Concept of Anxiety (1844), Kierkegaard addresses evil and guilt in the religious context of original sin. Although humans stand in a generational succession in relation to Adam, sin is actualized by each individual human being due to his spirit, which opens up freedom and thus action possibilities for him. It is not only about the fear of doing wrong, but about being able to act at all and even more, having to act. Anxiety is the “dizziness of freedom” (W I, 57). Through it, guilt already arises. The paradox of freedom is that it cannot remain with itself, but that it must grasp something and thus finitude. The attempt not to grasp finitude is not only impossible, but also does not preserve innocence. With the awareness of freedom, innocence is already definitively lost. Neither can humans deny freedom nor the anxiety associated with it. Therefore, it is not a matter of getting rid of anxiety, but of being anxious in the right way (cf. ibid., 141). This is done by the fact that humans not only discover possibilities in the field of finitude through freedom, but also the dimension of infinity and, with it, faith. He defines faith as follows: “By faith I mean here […] the inner certainty that anticipates infinity” (ibid., 142). But how is this certainty of faith to be achieved? Kierkegaard deals with this question in his work Concluding Unscientific Postscript to the Philosophical Fragments (1846). The starting point is his distinction between an objective, scientific truth and a subjective one that concerns the innermost conviction of the individual. It is what he is willing to live and die for. It includes faith. He points to the dilemma associated with Christian faith. Lessing had already pointed out that we only have historical evidence of the truth of Christianity, but its character as a revelation authenticated by miracles is closed to us who are present. There is an unbridgeable gap between the two; it is the one between reason and faith. Kierkegaard quotes Lessing, who, in view of this situation, confesses: “That, that is the nasty wide ditch that I can’t get over, no matter how often and earnestly I’ve tried to make the jump” (Kierkegaard 2003, 91). Kierkegaard picks up the image. He confirms that one can only reach faith by a jump to be made by the individual human being. This jump is a “category of decision” (ibid.).

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In his book The Sickness unto Death (1849), Kierkegaard discusses the inner requirements that must be met in order to take the leap of faith. He first determines man as spirit and further explains: “But what is spirit? Spirit is the self. But what is the self? The self is a relation that relates to itself or is it the relation that the relation relates to itself; the self is not the relation, but that the relation relates to itself ” (W IV, 13). The existence of this self-relation is what sets man apart from the animal. But man cannot get away from his self, it is what drives him to despair. Kierkegaard names three forms of despair: 1) despairing of not being conscious of having a self; he calls this “untrue” despair, 2) despairing of not wanting to be oneself, and 3) “despairing of wanting to be oneself ” (ibid., 14). In the first form of despair, man is ignorant of the fact that he is despairing, or even denies that he is in despair. Those who say of themselves that they are not in despair, on the contrary, who are managing their affairs in an outstanding way, are in truth on a very deep level of despair, because they are like sick people who think they are healthy because they do not yet know of their illness. Kierkegaard describes this form of despair as follows: The life of such a person consists in “getting married, having children, being honored and respected—and one may not notice that in a deeper sense he lacks a self. This is not given much attention in the world; for a self is what is least asked for in the world, and is what is most dangerous if one shows that one has it” (ibid., 31). The transition from this “untrue” form of despair to the true one consists in the awareness of one’s own self. This often happens as a result of strokes of fate. Consciousness is decisive for the self; for with it comes self-consciousness and this increases the will. But it is in the will that the self manifests and through it the self becomes aware of its freedom, for “the self is freedom” (ibid., 28). But with freedom also comes the awareness of one’s own responsibility towards oneself. In this situation, the two further forms of despair arise. According to the second, man wants to be somebody else, he wants to have another self. He considers his self to be a piece of clothing that one can change if one does not like it anymore. But what would happen—Kierkegaard asks—if man really got another self? Would he then even be able to recognize himself? In the third form of despair, man wants to be defiantly self-reliant (cf. Kaufmann 2002, 111). He wants to “desperately command or create himself, make himself the self that he wants to be” (W IV, 66). He rejects any help, even that which could come “by virtue of the absurd” from God. He does not recognize that there is a power that has “set” him. Kierkegaard refers to both forms of despair, either not wanting to be oneself or wanting

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to be oneself, as sin. The opposite is not virtue, but faith. Kierkegaard defines the paradoxical, irrational situation of faith as follows: “Faith is: that the self, in being itself and wanting to be itself, is founded transparently in God” (ibid., 78). Despite all the differences, Luther and Kierkegaard agree that existing or merely imagined freedom does not mean happiness, but rather burdens the conscience. It is a negative quantity. On the other hand, for both of them, the insight of one’s own despair is the prerequisite for faith, which alone delivers man from it. It is not reason that saves man, but only the faith given or achieved by a leap from God. Finally, both don’t exclude religiously motivated violence. However, Kierkegaard’s history of reception extends beyond the religious sphere. In the twentieth century, his thoughts served as the starting point for the hermeneutics of existence by Heidegger and Jaspers and for the atheistic existentialism by Sartre (cf. Chap. XI, 2).

III The Moral Sense—Ethics and Metaethics

The ancient ethics call happiness the goal of human life, and this lies in human nature, i.e. in its essence. If one understood happiness as a feeling and saw nature as the actual driving force of action, one could think that the ethics of moral sense native to the Anglo-Saxon language could be directly derived from it. But appearances are deceptive. Because in contrast to this, ancient ethics is a rational ethics. Reason has a guiding function, because it belongs to human nature itself. This is true for Plato, for Aristotle and also for Epicurus. Therefore, while there may be a contrast between reason and desires for them, there is no contrast between reason and nature. In order to understand the approach of the ethics of moral sense, the conceptual history must be taken into account. Now reason (‘reason’, ‘understanding’) and sentiment (‘feeling’) form a contrast. Reason as a representative of the rational principle casts a detached, calculating look at things, while feeling is the driving force in man, which comes from the ‘heart’. Feeling is the original. It plays the central role in human life. Man can trust him. There is, so the thesis of these philosophers, a moral sense in man that connects him with all other men. As a feeling of sympathy and benevolence it is suitable to form the basis of ethics. On the other hand, there are also passions, feelings of hatred, revenge and egoism. But these do not gain the upper hand. The reason is not only that the moral sense is stronger than the egoistic and destructive tendencies in man, but that it is supported by a principle that is of the utmost importance for the cohesion of human society. It is the principle of general utility. It forms the principles of utilitarianism. Of course, not all social problems are © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer-Verlag GmbH, DE, part of Springer Nature 2023 W. Pleger, The Good Life, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-05969-7_4

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solved in this way, because one’s own interests and those of society can be in conflict with each other. But at this point the clever calculator comes into play. He shows that one’s own well-being depends on the common good. In a society marked by disputes, crime, violence or even civil war, one’s own well-being cannot flourish. It is reason that combines the principle of benevolence with principles of justice. They are the ones who guarantee public order and peace. Building on Shaftesbury Hutcheson has, in confrontation with Hobbes and Mandeville, who emphasized the egoistic principle one-sidedly, pointed to the incorruptible moral sense in man and thereby already brought utilitarian considerations to bear. Hume, building on this thought, claimed that the feeling has priority over the intellect in terms of leadership. The intellect, according to his astonishing thesis, is merely the “slave” of the feeling and should remain so. It was he who, in accordance with utilitarian principles, combined the principles of benevolence and sympathy with the principles of justice. He also, in a way that would later guide meta-ethical discussion, introduced the strict distinction between statements of fact and statements of value, which is sometimes referred to as “Hume’s Law.” That feelings form the basis of all moral judgments is also the core thesis of representatives of an emotive ethic, who combine their approach with meta-ethical considerations. Among them are Ayer and Stevenson. They see the task of meta-ethics as being impartial towards moral judgments and merely analyzing them. In detailed studies of our everyday language, they make it clear how statements of fact and value judgments differ from each other, but also how they interpenetrate.

1 “Moral Sense”—The Moral Sense (Hutcheson) “All people who speak of the good are of the opinion that it arouses love in those who, in their opinion, possess it, and that, on the other hand, the good does not do this. In these matters, people must consult their own hearts. How else do they feel towards those who, as they assume, possess honesty, loyalty, generosity, and goodness, even if they do not expect any benefits from the admired qualities - how else towards those who possess natural goods, such as houses, land, gardens, vineyards, health, strength, and intelligence? We will notice that we necessarily love and praise the holders

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of the former. But the possession of the latter does not evoke any love for its owner at all, but often the opposite affect of envy and hatred. […] Some actions have something good about them for people. Or: through a higher sense, which I call the moral sense [moral sense ], we take pleasure in the contemplation of such actions of others and are determined to love the one who acts (and we take much more pleasure when we are aware that we have committed such actions ourselves) without regard to further natural benefits from them.” (Francis Hutcheson: On the Origin of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue. Hamburg 1986, 13 ff. and 16) Hutcheson (1694–1746) is born in Drumalig in Northern Ireland. His family came from Scotland and had emigrated to Ireland. He studied theology in Glasgow from 1711 to 1717. After his studies he returned to Ireland and founded a private academy for the Presbyterians in Dublin. In 1725 his first major ethical treatise appears. Its title already marks his intention. It is called: An Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue; in two treatises: In Which the Principles of the Late Earl of Shaftesbury Are Explain’d and Defended, Against the Author of the Fable of the Bees. In 1729 he is called to the chair of moral philosophy in Glasgow, where he lives until his death. He is considered the founder of the Scottish school of moral philosophy. Hutcheson understands his philosophy as a continuation of Shaftesbury’s thoughts and as a criticism of Hobbes’ (1588–1679) theoretical egoism and Mandeville’s (1670–1733). This criticism runs through his book. Again and again he goes directly and indirectly above all to Mandeville. Therefore, it makes sense to briefly sketch his approach. Mandeville, a doctor born in Holland, emigrated to England in the nineties. His book The Fable of the Bees or Private Vices, Public Benefits from the year 1714 is an expanded version of his poem The Unhappy Hive or the Honest Rogues from the year 1705. The poem satirically reverses traditional virtue ethics. While this assumes that the common good of a state depends on the virtue of its citizens, Mandeville paradoxically argues that it is precisely the vices of human beings—such as egoism, vanity, ruthless profit maximization, striving for luxury and even fraud—that drive the economy, increase the wealth of society and finally promote the common good. There seems to be no evil that does not serve this purpose. Even burglars contribute to economic development. They help to keep blacksmiths busy making new locks (cf. Mandeville 2014, 43). Modesty, humility, needlessness, honesty and all the other virtues commonly preached paralyze economic activity

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and make the common good wither. In his fable he illustrates this thought with the example of a beehive: “The busy multitude of the beehive / thrived through the crowd of its people. / Millions dedicate strength and time / to the pleasure and vanity of others, / millions are called again, / to destroy what those have created. / Despite the exports to all over the world / there is still a lack of workers” (ibid., 80 f.). But Mandeville is critical enough to recognize that, on the one hand, production and destruction are part of the economic process and, on the other hand, that the wealth thus created does not benefit everyone. He sees that the social mechanism leads to the accumulation of economic wealth in the hands of a few, while the mass of workers have no share in it. He says: “Many a rich man, who had toiled little, / Brought his business to high bloom, / While with scythe and shovel / Many a hard-working poor devil / Sweating stood at his work, / So that he found something to nibble on” (ibid., 81). Mandeville sees the emerging bourgeois society, sees its widening gap between rich and poor and yet does not want to change this situation. He says: “Pride, luxury and fraud / Must be, so that a people thrives. / Often the hunger torments us terribly, / But it is essential for life” (ibid., 92). The hunger of the poor part of the population is the motor of economic development. Therefore, it must remain. Therefore, he also speaks out decisively against the education of the poor. This would only lead to these people demanding a place in society corresponding to their education and thus destroying the economic structure. He also turns against the trade unions that were forming in his time. He states with disgust, “that a pack of lackeys have come to such audacity that they have founded a union and created statutes by which they oblige themselves not to serve for less than the and the sum” (ibid., 337). And he continues: “If the order is not restored in good time […] and if they can meet as often as they like without punishment, it will be in their power to turn the comedy into a tragedy as soon as they feel like it” (ibid., 338). Mandeville, who was appreciated by Marx for his analytical sharpness, wants to change nothing because, on the one hand, it corresponds to his judgment about the unchangeable nature of man, whom he considers “an extremely selfish and rebellious as well as a clever animal” (ibid., 94), and on the other hand, because it is precisely the “vices” that create “public benefits” in a paradoxical way. It is this dialectic of the progress of bourgeois society, which Kant, Hegel and Marx thematize in a new way. Hutcheson takes the exact opposite position to Mandeville. He says: Even though we may envy those who possess great wealth, we by no means admire them for it. Rather, our moral sense and our love are directed

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towards those who possess “honesty, faithfulness, generosity and goodness” (see quotation). Hutcheson refers to this moral sense as moral sense. It is independent of external, natural goods and has its own, distinctive quality. This difference can also be seen in the fact that we experience the damage we suffer as a result of a natural event, such as a beam falling down or crop damage caused by a storm, quite differently than if we become victims of the “villainy” of a fraud or an act of cruelty (cf. Hutcheson 1986, 19). Only in the latter cases do we experience anger, and only this is an expression of a moral sense. We also experience things differently if someone intentionally damages us or if it is done by accident. The moral sense cannot be bribed. Thus, we will also not be tempted to morally condone an abhorrent act towards a child as a result of a reward or another personal advantage (cf. ibid., 24). It is also noteworthy that, although Hutcheson is of the opinion that the moral sense was given to humans by the “Creator of Nature”, he does not make his judgments dependent on the prospect of a reward in the afterlife. He makes it clear that the moral sense can also be found in people who do not believe in God. He says: “Our moral sense is not based on religion” (ibid., 25) and, to justify this, points out that “many people have high concepts of honor, faithfulness, generosity and justice, who hardly have any idea of deity or any thoughts of future rewards, and abhor any betrayal, cruelty or injustice without regard to future punishments” (ibid., 25). The moral sense, like the sense of beauty, is a universal, religion-independent trait in humans. Hutcheson follows the position already taken by Shaftesbury (cf. Copleston V, 1994, 179). In stark contrast to Mandeville, Hutcheson emphasizes that “we unintentionally promote our greatest personal welfare by aiming solely at the welfare of others” (Hutcheson 1986, 29). A key aspect of moral sensibility is goodwill towards other people. But that does not mean the denial of the self. Self-love and goodwill are rather linked to each other. This does not always happen without tension. Both can enter into a contradiction. Hutcheson discusses the relationship using different examples. So self-love can predominate and goodwill remain subordinate, and vice versa. In any case, both sides are to be offset against each other. He explains: “If a person had such goodwill that it would have produced an act even without regard to self-interest, then the goodwill would not have been reduced in this act, even if this person had also had personal advantage […] in mind in addition to the common good. If, without expectation of self-interest, he had not achieved so much for the common good, then the effect of self-love must be deducted” (ibid., 36).

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To what extent goodwill is replaced by any selfish thinking, Hutcheson makes clear with two examples. The one concerns the love of parents for their child. He says: “Parents, for example, can have great goodwill for a highly mischievous child whose behavior they hate with great displeasure” (ibid., 37). This is only possible if every selfish interest is left behind. The love of parents for their children can therefore not be compared to the capital that a trader invests in his goods in order to make a profit from it. The second example concerns compassion. Compassion is a painful feeling. If our whole striving were directed towards obtaining pleasure, we would do everything to get rid of this pain. “But do we not find in ourselves that our striving is not directed towards the relief of our own pain? If this were our only goal, we would run away, close our eyes, or turn our thoughts away from the suffering object; this would be the easiest way to eliminate our pain” (ibid., 43). But we do not do that any more than we limit our goodwill to our lifetime. So we also consider our relatives after our death with a will. We would not do that either if we were only interested in the pleasure in our life. Hutcheson concludes: “It is evident from all this that human nature has an elementary unselfish striving for the happiness of others” (ibid., 46). It is the nature from which “virtue” arises, i.e. it also arises “from instincts or passions”. He turns against those who claim that virtue arises only from “reason” (ibid., 81). He relies on Plato, Aristotle and Cicero in his thesis, who speak of a “natural instinct or natural disposition of every being for its self-preservation and its highest perfection as the source of virtue” (ibid., 82 Anm.). In his opinion, reason does not stand in opposition to the natural instinct, but serves it. This is also possible because the goodwill anchored in human nature is itself reasonable. The criterion for the moral assessment of an action is the motive. The question of whether this action was successful does not play a role. Even “extremely useful deeds” are “devoid of any moral beauty” if they were not done “out of good intentions”. “But an unsuccessful attempt at doing good or promoting the common good will appear just as lovable as the most successful one if it sprang from the same strong goodwill” (ibid., 61). And as far as the consequences are concerned, the actor can only be held morally responsible for the foreseeable ones. However, Hutcheson does not completely exclude the actual success of an action in his considerations. In the question of social utility, measurable success even plays a decisive role. Those who ask themselves how to “promote the common good most effectively” need not only general criteria, but also precise calculation methods. In general, it is said: “What produces more good than bad in total is considered good, what is not, as bad (ibid., 63).

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The interaction of self-love and general welfare plays a decisive role. Selflove and general welfare are not always in opposition. Self-love can even serve the general welfare. Hutcheson explains: “Our reason can actually discover certain limits within which we can not only act out of self-love and in accordance with the welfare of the whole, but where it is absolutely necessary for the welfare of the whole that each person acts within these limits for his own welfare. The lack of such self-love would be harmful to everyone” (ibid., 67). In calculating the overall welfare, Hutcheson develops the classical principle of utilitarianism. It states: “The best action is the one that brings the greatest happiness to the greatest number of people, the worst is the one that causes the same amount of misery” (ibid., 71). In other words: The good action is the one that has the “most universal unlimited effect on the greatest and most extensive happiness of all reasonable beings” (ibid., 73). He argues utilitarian when he introduces a mathematical formula language to calculate the common good. He explains his two basic formulas as follows: “1. The moral value of any actor or the amount of common good he produces is the product of his goodwill (W) and his abilities (F), or (we replace the words with their initial letters; A stands for amount of good, a for amount of bad): A = W x F. / 2. Similarly, the amount of personal welfare or interest (I) that someone produces for himself is a product of his self-love (S) and his abilities (F), or […]: I = S x F” (ibid., 75). This formula can lead to an extension of this basic formula by taking into account the different factors to be considered in an action, i.e. by adding or subtracting the factors that increase or decrease the common good. The goal is to determine the common good as accurately as possible. In addition to introducing this quantitative method, Hutcheson is concerned with proving the anchoring of the moral sense in human nature by pointing to its universal occurrence. In order to successfully argue that the moral sense is universal, we would have to “find a country where coldblooded murder, torture and all other evils are not only approved, but also indifferent, without regard to the benefit […]. We would have to find people for whom the cheaters, the ungrateful and the cruel are in the same category as the generous, friendly, loyal and humane” (ibid., 87). But these countries do not exist. However, it must also be taken into account that at other times and in other countries there were and are other customs. For example, Hutcheson points out that in Sparta wealth was despised and therefore little care was taken of the security of one’s property. Instead, value was placed on a hardened and cunning youth. Therefore, “a skilfully executed theft […] was so

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little hated that a law was passed to grant it impunity” (ibid., 88). And even if travellers report “strange cruelties against old people or children”, one must not assume that this is the result of “passionate outbursts of anger”, but rather from the motive of “protecting them from disgrace by enemies, avoiding the weaknesses of old age (which may appear to be a greater evil than death) or freeing the strong and useful citizens from the burden of their maintenance or the difficulties of their care” (ibid., 89). These reports— according to Hutcheson—are not an argument against the universality of benevolence. He justifies this as follows: “If the killing of the old people with all their consequences actually contributes to the common good and reduces the misery of the old people, it is undoubtedly justified. Yes, perhaps the old people choose it in the hope of a future existence” (ibid., 90 f.). But from a widely interpreted concept of benevolence to a purely utilitarian principle, it is only a small step for Hutcheson. The first example is again provided by antiquity. Obviously, this principle was the reason “why Lycurg and Solon introduced equally barbaric laws for the killing of deformed and weak people in order to avoid the burden of a number of useless citizens” (ibid., 89). The second example radicalises this thought. Hutcheson says: “If a deformed or weak race could never be useful to humanity through skill or art, but developed into an entirely unbearable burden and thus plunged an entire state into ruin, then it is just to kill them. Everyone considers this to be just in the case of an overloaded boat in the storm” (ibid., 91). Finally, Hutcheson discusses the legal consequences of his concept. First, he points to the advantage of the natural sense of morality over reason. He says: “The powerful reason we are so proud of in relation to other living beings nevertheless proceeds too slowly, too uncertainly and too hesitantly to serve us in all difficulties without the external senses in our self-preservation and without the sense of morality in our orientation towards the welfare of the whole” (ibid., 135). The sense of morality is impaired by misguided reason, by “strong selfishness” and “false self-love”, finally by bad education. Since the sense of morality was implanted in humans by God, one might assume that Hutcheson also derives the legal provisions from the commandments of God. But he does not. If a command could only be based on the fact that God wants it that way, but not on the fact that what God wants is good, the justification of the law would amount to the tautology “God wants what he wants“. / Therefore we must assume that actions have something in them that we see as absolutely good. This is benevolence or the orientation towards the general, natural happiness of reasonable beings (ibid., 138).

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Hutcheson distinguishes between perfect and imperfect rights. “Examples of perfect rights are: the right to our life; to the fruits of our work; to demand that persons who, according to conscientious assessment, are able to do so, keep contracts entered into; the right to direct our actions towards the general or harmless private welfare […] and many others of a similar nature […] / Imperfect rights are those whose general violation would not necessarily plunge people into misfortune. These rights aim at the improvement and increase of the positive welfare of a society, but are not absolutely necessary to avert general distress” (ibid., 141). These two types of rights differ in their degree of bindingness. While the perfect ones are necessary to guarantee the rule of law and can therefore be enforced, the imperfect ones cannot be “enforced” by force. Their violation merely causes disappointment in the affected persons. “Examples of imperfect rights are: the right of the poor to the charity of the rich; the right of all people to services that do not require any effort or expense on the part of the performer; the right of the benefactor to gratitude and the like” (ibid.,141 f.). In addition to these two, there is a third category, the external rights. They include the right of the creditor to collect his money from a bankrupt debtor, the right to comply with a contract even if it is not beneficial for both parties, the right of a rich heir to refuse debts incurred during his minority, etc. Finally, the inalienable rights are to be distinguished from the alienable rights. The inalienable rights include “our right to our own judgment” and the right to freedom of religion. The alienable rights include those by which we can transfer our rights to another, e.g. property rights. The inalienable rights of the individual form an absolute barrier for any government. “Consequently, there can be no government that is so absolute that it would even have an external right to do or command anything at all” (ibid., 152). Where it encroaches on inalienable rights, a “right to resistance” arises (ibid.). Hutcheson’s history of effects is widely dispersed. It is characterized by his influence on the philosophy of the moral sense in the narrower sense, for example with Hume. But his approach also formed the basis for Kant’s early ethical considerations. The second line consists in his considerations of utilitarianism (see Chap. V). Here, in particular, Bentham and Mill would have to be mentioned. His radical utilitarian statements about the killing of deformed people were taken up by Peter Singer. Finally, Ayer and Stevenson connect the emotive concept of moral justification with meta-ethical reflections.

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2 Reason and Feeling (Hume) “A controversy has recently arisen which deserves much more investigation. It is about the general foundation of morality: whether it is to be derived from reason or from feeling; whether we arrive at its knowledge through a chain of reasoning and induction or through an immediate feeling and a finer inner sense […]. But even if reason, if it is perfectly trained and developed, is sufficient to enlighten us about the harmful or useful tendency of properties or actions, it is nevertheless not sufficient to produce any moral rejection or approval. Utility is nothing but a tendency towards a certain goal; and if the goal were completely indifferent to us, we would feel the same indifference towards the means. Here, a feeling must occur so that the useful is given preference over the harmful tendencies. This feeling can be nothing other than a sympathy with the happiness of mankind and an indignation at its misery, since these are the different goals towards which virtue and vice work. Here, then, reason gives us an insight into the different tendencies of actions, and humanity makes a distinction in favor of those which are useful and beneficial.” (David Hume: An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals. Stuttgart 1984, 88 and 216 f.) David Hume is born in Edinburgh in 1711. Since 1723 he has been studying law, ancient philosophy and literature at the local university, but he breaks off his studies in 1729. In the following years he suffers from a severe depression. In 1734 he sets out on a journey to France and stays in Paris, Reims and La Flèche at times. In 1739/1740 his main philosophical work with the programmatic title A Treatise Of Human Nature: Being An Attempt to introduce the experimental Method of Reasoning Into Moral Subjects appears. His application for a chair of ethics at the University of Edinburgh fails because of the resistance of the church, which accuses him of atheism. In 1748 he publishes his essay An Inquiry Into Human Understanding and in 1751 his book An Inquiry Into the Principles of Morals. His application for a chair of logic at the University of Glasgow in 1752 also fails. In the years 1752 to 1757 he is librarian at the Faculty of Law in Edinburgh and starts working on his multi-volume History of England. In 1763 he travels to France again and his philosophy arouses great interest among the French Enlightenment thinkers. After his return to England he is Undersecretary of State in the Foreign Office in London from 1767 to 1768. He dies in Edinburgh in 1776. Posthumously his Autobiography, his essays On Suicide

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and On the Immortality of the Soul as well as (1779) the Dialoge on natural religion (cf. Streminger 1992) appear. Hume’s philosophical questions are determined by his interest in an empirical determination of human nature. He thus turns against all rationalist attempts to explain and prove man, his soul, and even their immortality speculatively by means of reason concepts. His methodological model is Newton and the principles of experience and mathematics used by him. Hume remarks: “In natural philosophy one is now cured of the passion for hypotheses and systems and only wants to listen to arguments that are based on experience. It is high time that a similar reform was striven for in all moral investigations and that every ethical system is rejected that is not based on facts and observations.” (Hume 1984, 93). Hume would like to make experience the basis for his anthropology, which also includes moral philosophy. But because of his involvement with ancient skepticism, he knows that the senses can deceive and that even experiential knowledge is not error-free. Therefore, he develops a skeptical empiricism. In it, the self-evident assumptions of our theoretical and practical world experience dissolve. In the field of theoretical philosophy, these are the categories of causality and substance. The category of causality can be explained using the example of a game of billiards. Hume explains: “The movement of one body is considered the cause of the movement of the other when it collides with it” (Hume 1989, 103). But in fact we do not see this relationship, because even with the “most intense attention […] we find nothing but that one body approaches the other and that its movement precedes that of the other” (ibid., 103 f.). From the regularity of this observation we wrongly infer causality. Something similar applies to the category of substance. We have ideas of objects that we consider to be a unity of substance and accident. But the question is, “whether the idea of substance is derived from the impressions of sensory perception or the impressions of self-perception?” (ibid., 27). Now we only perceive “color”, “sound” or “taste” with our senses. But no one thinks that “substance is a color, a sound or a taste. The idea of substance must therefore, if it really exists, have arisen from an impression of self-perception” (ibid., 28). Hume concludes from this consideration: “The idea of a substance […] is nothing but a combination of simple ideas that have been combined by the imagination” (ibid.). The reason for the thought of the existence of a substance beyond our imagination is that we refer our idea of substance to an “unknown something ”, to which the perceived properties “seem to ‘stick’” (ibid.).

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In the field of anthropology and ethics, the concept of “I” and the relationship of “freedom and necessity” are topics of his skeptical consideration. Hume criticizes the “philosophers”,—among them with certainty Descartes—“who imagine that we are aware of what we call our I at every moment in the most immediate way; we feel its existence and its duration; we are certain of its perfect identity as well as its simplicity […]” (ibid., 325). But this appearance is deceptive; because if we take a strictly empirical standpoint, we find that the idea of an I is contradictory, since our I is never the object of our experience. Hume explains this thought as follows: “Every real idea must be caused by an impression. But our self or personality is not an impression. Rather, it is supposed to be that to which our various impressions and ideas refer. If an impression caused the idea of the self, then this impression would have to remain unchanged throughout our entire life; for the self is supposed to exist in such a way. But there is no constant and unchangeable impression. Pleasure and displeasure, joy and worry, affections and sensory perceptions follow one another; they do not all exist at the same time” (ibid., 326). Therefore, for him, there is no self, and people are nothing “but a bundle or a collection of various perceptions that follow one another with incomprehensible speed and are constantly in flux and motion” (ibid., 327). Since Hume is looking for the self among impressions, i.e. on the level of objects, he does not recognize the possibility already mentioned by him to see the self on another level, i.e. as a subject to which our “various impressions and ideas” refer. The difficulties into which skeptical empiricism leads become particularly clear in the example of the topic of “freedom and necessity”. While Hume had called into question causality and necessity in the first book of his Treatise, he rehabilitates both in the analysis of human actions, which he himself understands as part of the movements of nature. He says: When we look at human actions, we can always recognize “the same uniformity and regularity of natural principles” despite all the differences in living conditions (Hume 1978, 138). We also apply this principle to human actions. We are also not deterred by the reference to the unpredictability and instability of human desires. It is our “imagination” that infers only a different degree of certainty from contradictory observations. Therefore, “we do not give up the idea of causality and necessity, but assume that the existing contradiction arises from the action of mutually opposing or hidden causes” (ibid., 141); for no connection is “more constant and secure than the connection of certain actions with certain motives and characters” (ibid.). If we denied this, we would have to call “insane people” free, since they would be the ones who would miss uniformity in their actions the most. But their outbursts

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from the continuity of character are not a sign of freedom, but obey the principle of chance. Hume’s plea against freedom and for necessity culminates in the statement: “Only if the principle of necessity is valid does a person gain value or disvalue through his actions, even if this contradicts the general opinion to a great extent” (ibid., 149). Hume seems to have recognized the aporias of a skeptical empiricism when he reports at the end of the first book of his Treatise about the “shipwreck” he had suffered with his philosophy (cf. Weischedel 1980, 204–212). And with the thought of circumnavigating the earth with a ship that has sprung a leak, he asks himself whether it would not be better to “rather perish on the barren rock on which I am presently located than to venture out onto that boundless ocean that extends into infinity” (Hume 1989, 341). But in fact Hume does not resign. However, he leaves—to speak in images—the sinking ship of skeptical empiricism and continues his journey on another one, which one could call a pragmatic empiricism. This can be characterized in that, in place of a radical skepticism, an experience concept comes into play which does not physically interpret human nature, but rather in the horizon of history and practice. In his ethics, Hume brings to bear a pragmatic experience concept in which a re-definition of the relationship between reason and feeling plays a decisive role. He places the decisive emphasis of his considerations on the fact that, in questions of morality, feeling plays the decisive role and not reason (cf. quote). The reason for this is that it is the task of reason to make judgments about truth and falsity, but not to motivate a specific action. This function is fulfilled exclusively by feeling. It is feeling that “goes beyond the calm and indifferent judgments of our reason” (Hume 1978, 197). Reason and feeling represent two different approaches to reality. While reason remains at a neutral distance to reality and merely analyzes and describes facts, a relationship of approval and disapproval, a practical engagement, arises through feeling. Hume makes this clear using the example of murder. While it is the task of reason to determine the precise circumstances of the deed, it is only through feeling that the deed itself receives a moral “coloration”, which makes it a crime. The wickedness of the crime cannot be read off the deed itself through the reasonable clarification of the case (cf. ibid., 210 f.). Judgments of reason and of moral feeling belong to different categories, but their confusion occurs again and again. It runs through all “moral systems”. It is recognized by a change in speech. Hume says: “Suddenly I am surprised that instead of the usual connections of words with ‘is ’ and ‘is not ’ I no longer encounter a sentence in which a ‘should ’ or ‘should not ’ would not be found. This change takes place imperceptibly; but

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it is of the utmost importance” (ibid., 211). Hume is convinced that it is not possible to derive ought-propositions from is-propositions. This thesis was later referred to as “Hume’s Law” (cf. Lüthe 1991, 66). However, it is remarkable that Hume himself makes a transition from an is-proposition to an ought-proposition at one point in his Treatise without thematizing it. He says: “Reason is only the slave of the affections and should be; it may never claim any other function than that of serving and obeying them” (Hume 1978, 153). If one did not want to accuse him of disregarding his own principle, this transition could at most be characterized as follows: As an empirical philosopher, he makes statements about the relationship between reason and affect in humans; but as a moral philosopher he takes sides. However, there remains a certain discrepancy, because Hume’s moral philosophy is not a deontological ethics, but a feelings- and happiness-based ethics oriented towards utilitarian principles. Hume sees himself in agreement with ancient philosophy when he says: “Although the ancient philosophers often emphasize that virtue is nothing other than what is reasonable, they seem in general to be of the opinion that morality derives its origin from taste and feeling” (Hume 1984, 88). Even if this interpretation appears somewhat idiosyncratic, it is true that in ancient ethics the search for happiness belongs to human nature. However, in contrast to Antiquity, Hume no longer wants to give reason an active role. The active part is taken over by feeling. Reason, or understanding, is passive. It is powerless to motivate actions. Its function is to conceptualize what is striven for or rejected by feeling. He distinguishes the functioning of the two abilities of man as follows: “What is honorable, what is just, what is decent, what is noble, what is generous, seizes the heart and drives us to accept it and hold on to it. What is understandable, what is evident, what is probable, what is true, only causes the cool approval of the mind” (ibid., 90). However, Hume does not want to completely do without the achievements of the mind; because, as the objects of feeling, he has an important function. His task is to give “a correct description” of these objects, to make “fine distinctions”, to make “correct conclusions”, to make “considerations” and “distant comparisons”. Therefore, he comes to the conclusion that “mind and feeling work together in almost all moral decisions and conclusions” (ibid., 91). Following Shaftesbury and Hutcheson, Hume places benevolence at the beginning and at the center of his ethical considerations. He characterizes it as follows: “The attributes sociable, good-natured, human, merciful, grateful, friendly, generous, charitable […] generally express the highest merit that the human nature is able to achieve” (ibid., 94). If these properties

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serve humanity, they “even raise their holder” above the “human nature” and “bring him closer to the divine” (ibid.). One aspect deserves special attention when considering benevolence. It is the benefit that society gains from the activity of a benevolent person. It is significant “namely the happiness and satisfaction that arise from his association and from his good services” (ibid., 96). This benefit is all the greater the more the benevolent person leaves his private sphere and his humanity becomes a “social virtue”. The principle of utility is a universal category that extends beyond the human sphere. Hume remarks: “Even if we recommend an animal or a plant as useful and benevolent, we praise and acknowledge them in accordance with their nature. On the other hand, the thought of the harmful influence of one of these low beings always causes us a feeling of aversion” (ibid., 97). Moral feeling and measurable benefit form a unity, the respective shares of which are difficult to assess when assessing a person. It is undisputed that “at least part of his reputation is due to the fact that benevolence promotes the interests of humanity and increases the happiness of society” (ibid., 100). If benevolence has both a private and a social dimension, then “social virtue” of justice is located entirely in the realm of society. In addition, utilitarianism becomes the prevailing principle. Hume argues as follows: The fact that justice is “useful for society” is evident. He therefore only wants to justify that “the public utility of the sole origin of justice is” (ibid., 101). Hume determines the meaning of justice for society by locating it in a thought experiment between two extremes, in which it loses any social significance. One case is a situation of absolute abundance. If nature had equipped humans with “all external amenities,” so that they could live without worries and fears for the future and every “social virtue would bloom and multiply tenfold,” one would not even dream of the “cautious, suspicious virtue of justice.” The security of property, a central component of a just society, would lose its importance. “Why call an object my if, as soon as another appropriates it, I only have to stretch out my hand to get something that is just as valuable? Justice would be in this case, because completely useless, an empty ceremony” (ibid., 102). Goods that, although essential, are available in abundance, like water and air, are already subject to the principle of a just distribution. The same applies where land is available in abundance. Only when goods become scarce, does the idea of a legal system arise. Justice would also be superfluous where the relationship of people is determined by a “comprehensive benevolence”. “Why set boundary stones between my field and my neighbor’s if my heart makes no difference between our interests […]?” (ibid., 103).

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The other case in which justice is abolished is extreme poverty. Suppose there is extreme poverty in a society, it is to be assumed that “the strict laws of justice are abandoned and the stronger motives of necessity and self-preservation give way” (ibid., 104). In the event of a shipwreck, everyone tries to save their lives, without “property boundaries” to take into account, as well as in extreme hunger. More: “Even in less urgent emergencies, the state opens grain silos without the consent of the owners” (ibid., 105). In this case, there is a kind of higher justice (cf. ibid.). If the social utility is the origin of justice, then societies have very different ideas about it. This thought leads to a fundamental question about the origin of the sense of justice: does it come from “thinking”, or does it arise from “a simple, original instinct that nature has implanted in man for just as beneficial purposes”? (ibid., 122). Hume’s answer is clear. Justice does not rest on an instinct; because the instinct, in contrast to animals, does not play a decisive role in humans. The origin of justice lies much rather in utility, since it “generally has the strongest influence and exerts an unrestricted power over our feelings. The utility must therefore be the source of a significant part of the value that is attributed to humanity, benevolence, friendship, community spirit and other social virtues of the same kind; just as it is the only source of the moral approval that is paid to loyalty, justice, truthfulness, integrity and other admirable and useful properties and principles” (ibid., 125). Hume is so sure of the principle of utility that he equates it with “Newton’s main rule”  (cf. ibid.). In his theory of the state it becomes clear that the principles he uses belong to a pragmatic empiricism and not to a skeptical one. While his skeptical philosophy denied the freedom of man, his pragmatic one takes the “natural freedom”, which he calls “innate”, for granted (cf. ibid., 126). It should be noted, however, that the unrestricted use of this freedom leads to the “temptations” of the “self-interest” to give in. Only with the state does the idea of “perfect peace and perfect harmony with all others” connect (ibid.). The restriction of freedom therefore takes place for the sake of the utility that is connected with the subordination under state power. Hume explains: “It is obvious that if the government were completely useless, it would never have been able to exist, and that the only justification for allegiance is the advantage that it brings to society by maintaining peace and order among men” (ibid.). The same applies to international law. The observance of treaties between states is useful, i.e. “justice rules that prevail between individuals also retain a certain validity in interstate traffic” (ibid., 127). But the degree of bindingness is weaker. Individuals cannot live without an association, as the state

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is, states can very well. States can even “in a state of general war” continue to live. Hume’s justification is as follows: “All politicians and most philosophers will admit that state reason in special emergencies can suspend the rules of justice and any contract or alliance void, if the strict observance would entail a significant disadvantage for one of the two contracting parties” (ibid., 127). The quote makes it clear that Hume sees usefulness as the central criterion of his considerations. But usefulness and general goodwill are not mutually exclusive (cf. ibid., 154). They promote and support each other. This insight leads him to the practical plea to overcome the contrast of “compassion” and “self-interest” and “in our calm judgments and conversations about the characters of people all these differences to neglect and our feelings more general and social to make” (ibid., 152). Hume tries to mediate two opposites in his philosophy. One is the one from mind and feeling. Here he determines the mind as the servant of the feeling. The other is the one between self-interest and goodwill (sympathy) towards others. Here, the principle of usefulness mediates. The goodwill towards others also proves to be useful in the long run in one’s own interest as useful. Hume’s reception history is remarkable. Kant has dealt intensively with him. Hume’s thinking prompted him to look for ways to take seriously the claims of rationalism and empiricism and yet to overcome their contradiction in a critical transcendental philosophy. Hume’s philosophy also plays an important role for utilitarianism, for emotive ethics and finally for metaethics.

3 The Emotive Nature of Moral Judgments (Ayer/Stevenson) “When I claim that moral judgments are of an emotional and not a descriptive nature, that they express attitudes in an appellative way, not facts, and that they can therefore neither be true nor false (or that it would at least serve greater clarity if the categories ‘true’ and ‘false’ were not applied to them), I am not thereby claiming that nothing is good or bad, right or wrong, or that it is indifferent how we act. For such a claim would itself be an expression of a moral attitude. And this attitude is neither a consequence of the theory, nor do I make it my own de facto. It would in fact hardly be tenable. It would exclude egoism as a life rule; for the decision to take only one’s own pleasure into account is itself a value judgment. That attitude would rather require us to do without any life rule at all. Whether that is possible at all, remains to be seen. I would nevertheless like to emphasize

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that I do not recommend such an attitude. Nor does my meta-ethical theory contain the opposite recommendation. It is true that a moral philosopher (even a moral philosopher in my sense of the word) may have moral standards and occasionally make moral judgments. But these moral judgments cannot be a logical consequence of his philosophy. To analyze moral judgments does not mean to make such judgments oneself.” (Alfred J. Ayer: The practical function of moral judgments. In: Dieter Birnbacher/Norbert Hoerster (eds.): Texts on Ethics. Munich 1976, 64 f.) Alfred Jules Ayer is born in London in 1910 and studies philosophy and other subjects at Christ Church, Oxford, from 1929 to 1931. In 1932 he came into contact with the Vienna Circle. After his return to Christ Curch College, he first worked there as a lecturer and from 1935 as a research fellow. In 1936 his first major work Language, Truth and Logic was published, and in 1940 a second one with the title The Foundations of Empirical Knowledge. After the Second World War, in which he took part as a soldier, he was appointed professor of the philosophy of mind and logic at the University of London in 1946 and in Oxford in 1959. In 1965 he became president of the British Humanist Association and turned increasingly to questions of practical philosophy. In 1970 he was knighted. Together with Bertrand Russel, he committed himself to the ban of nuclear weapons. He also taught repeatedly in the USA. Ayer died in London in 1989. Ayer is in the tradition of English empiricism. He received important impulses from Hume. Due to his contacts with the Vienna Circle and his engagement with Carnap and Wittgenstein, he developed a logical empiricism. His meta-ethical position, which has the character of an analytical philosophy of language, he formulated in continuation, but also in distinction to considerations of George Edward Moore. In his book Principia Ethica, which appeared in 1903, developed Moore (1873–1958) the thesis that the central concept of ethics, namely the word ‘good’, is indefinable. In contrast to a word like e.g. ‘horse’, which represents a complex of parts, the word ‘good’ is simply and therefore not definable. Traditional ethical views, such as e.g. hedonism, which identified it with ‘pleasure’, commit, in his opinion, a “naturalistic fallacy”, because pleasure is a natural feeling, the word ‘good’ is however a property that refers to this feeling, but is not identical with it. If both were identical, the tautology would arise: “‘Pleasure is pleasure’” (Moore 1970, 43). Moore explains: “The decisive sense of ‘definition’ is the one according to which a definition determines which the parts are that unchangeably form a certain whole, and in this sense ‘good’ escapes any definition, because it is simple and has no parts.

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It is one of those countless objects of thought that are themselves incapable of definition, because they are the last concepts with which everything that is definable must be defined” (ibid., 39 f.). Moore explains this thought with another example. He says: “Take for example yellow. We can try to define it by the description of its physical equivalent; we can determine what kind of light vibrations have to stimulate the normal eye so that we perceive it. But a short consideration is enough to show that these light vibrations are not what we mean with yellow. They are not what we perceive” (ibid., 40). The fact that we cannot define the word ‘good’ does not mean however that we would not know what it means. Just as we always know what ‘yellow’ is, we have an intuitive knowledge of what ‘good’ is. Moore, who with his linguistic considerations about the meaning of the word ‘good’ opened the meta-ethical discourse, is therefore considered as the leading representative of intuitionism. Ayer begins his book Language, Truth and Logic with the programmatic attempt of an ‘elimination of metaphysics’. Under metaphysics he understands the claim of philosophy to be able to “acquire knowledge of a reality transcending the world of science and everyday experience” (Ayer 1970, 41). Of course this includes all religious matters, but also such philosophically significant ones as ‘substance’ or ‘being’. If, for example, one understands ‘being’ as an existential statement, then it is a meaningless metaphysical proposition. Although the propositions “‘Martyrs exist’” and “‘Martyrs suffer’” have the same grammatical structure, the first is a meaningless metaphysical statement, because—as already Kant found out—‘being’ is “not a property”. When we talk about a thing, we “set the existence of the thing tacitly as a condition” (ibid., 54). Metaphysically, in this sense, are also the statements of poetry, ethics and aesthetics. The difference to philosophical metaphysical statements is that they claim the unattainable to meet scientific criteria, while statements of poetry “at least” can serve to “express or evoke feelings, and thus subject to ethical or aesthetic standards” (ibid., 55 f.). The basis of science are statements that can be empirically verified. However, a final verification is not possible. All scientific statements therefore remain hypotheses (cf. ibid., 122). The criterion of knowledge is rather in the “examination of its success in practice”. It is successful, “as long as it enables us to predict future experience and thus to control our environment” (ibid., 63). A confirmed expectation is therefore also the criterion of truth. Ayer says: “If therefore an observation for which a given proposition is significant, agrees with our expectations, then the truth of that proposition is confirmed” (ibid., 130). But the question of the accurate prediction,

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and thus the truth, has not only a theoretical but also an eminent practical significance, because “it is clear that the satisfaction of even our simplest desires, including the desire to survive, depends on our ability to make successful predictions” (ibid., 128). The task of philosophy lies beyond metaphysics, but also beyond the sciences. Philosophy therefore never competes with the empirical sciences. Ayer points to the linguistic character of philosophy when he says: “The philosophical propositions are by their nature no facts, but linguistic propositions, that is, they do not describe the behavior of physical or even mental objects; they express definitions or the formal consequences of definitions. Consequently, we can say that philosophy is a branch of logic” (ibid., 73 f.). On the background of this determination of the task of philosophy, Ayer discusses the character of ethical statements, that is, the status of “value judgments” or “value statements”. According to the sense criterion of empiricism, which he advocates, according to which only propositions can be considered meaningful that can be empirically verified, value statements can be distinguished as follows: It can be shown that “value statements, insofar as they are significant, are ordinary ‘scientific’ statements and that, insofar as they are not scientific, they are not meaningful in the proper sense, but simply expressions of feeling, which can neither be true nor false” (ibid., 135). The same applies to aesthetic judgments. Ayer follows here the thesis of Wittgenstein: “Ethics and aesthetics are one” (Wittgenstein 1984, 83). In order to come to an analysis of the mixture of logical, empirical and metaphysical statements to be found in previous concepts of moral philosophy, Ayer proposes a division of ethical statements into “four main classes”: “There are first of all propositions which express definitions of ethical concepts or judgments about the legitimacy or possibility of certain definitions. Secondly, there are propositions which describe the phenomena of moral experience and their causes. There are thirdly admonitions to moral virtue, and finally there are actual ethical judgments” (Ayer 1970, 136). This division already results in the essential approach for philosophical analysis, because a “strict philosophical treatise on ethics should […] not express any ethical opinions. Rather, it should show, through an analysis of ethical concepts, the categories to which all such opinions belong” (ibid.). While the ethical concepts belonging to the first class are undoubtedly part of a moral philosophy, the moral experiences of the second are the subject of psychology and sociology. The admonitions, exclamations and commands of the third class are, however, instructions for action and therefore neither true nor false. They are not philosophical or scientific statements at all. So the status of ethical judgments remains to be clarified. First, it is

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necessary to “examine whether ethical value judgments can be transferred into empirical fact statements” (ibid., 137). Ayer points out that utilitarians and subjectivists claim this by regarding ethical judgments as psychological or sociological judgments. The subjectivist claims that a thing is good because it is generally accepted, the utilitarian, that an action is right which would cause the greatest happiness. Ayer rejects both concepts. The antithesis he represents includes the claim “that the validity of ethical judgments is not determined by the happiness-promising tendencies of actions—no more than by the nature of human feelings, but that they must be considered ‘absolute’ or ‘essential’ and not as empirically calculable” (ibid., 138). He relies on the “conventions of our real language”. The ethical symbols used in “our language” are not equivalent to any empirical propositions. There are rather “normative ethical concepts” which “cannot be reduced to empirical concepts” (ibid., 139). With this thesis he seems to support the “‘absolute’” thesis of intuitionism. According to this, every human being has only an intuitive moral certainty for himself. But he also rejects this theory, because there is no “relevant empirical test” to verify it (ibid., 140). The “third theory” advocated by Ayer agrees with the “absolutists” in that ethical basic concepts are not analyzable. In contrast to them, however, he is of the opinion that the “non-analyzability” is due to the fact that these concepts are “pseudo-concepts”. Ayer explains this thought and thus his approach as follows: “The presence of an ethical symbol in a proposition does not add anything to its actual content. So if I say to someone ‘You were wrong when you stole the money’, then I don’t say any more than if I had simply said ‘You stole the money’. By adding that this action was wrong, I don’t make any further statement about it. I only show my moral disapprobation of this action. It’s as if I had said ‘You stole the money’ in a special tone of horror […]” (ibid., 141). The sentence “Stealing money is wrong”— has no factual meaning. It is not a proposition that “can be either true or false” (ibid., 142). Ethical expressions are moral feelings. But they also serve to evoke feelings (cf. Kaulbach 1974, 85 ff.). This consideration also sheds light on the question of which assumption a dispute in questions of moral philosophy is possible. A dispute is only possible where the disputants feel the same values. The dispute then concerns the facts that are morally judged. However, a dispute about value questions is just as hopeless as the question of whether something is beautiful or ugly (cf. Ayer 1970, 150). Ayer sums up his considerations as follows: “There can be no such thing as an ethical science if one understands an ethical system to be a ‘true’ moral system. We have seen that, since ethical judgments are only expressions of feeling, there can be no way to determine the validity of an

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ethical system, and that it—in fact—makes no sense to ask whether such a system is true” (ibid., 148). In his Philosophical Essays from 1954, Ayer explains his meta-ethical approach of differentiating between factual statements and value judgments using the example of a—already by Hume discussed—murder case. To clarify the facts, “police investigation data” are necessary. These include questions such as: “Where, when and how the murder was committed; the identity of murderer and victim; the relationship in which they stood to each other. After that, the question of motive arises: Was the murderer jealous, was he after money, was he revenge for a personal insult, or was he pursuing a political goal” (in: Birnbacher/Hoerster 1991, 57). To be distinguished from these questions is the question: “Did he have the right to kill?” (ibid., 58). This question is about the “evaluation of the deed” (ibid., 59). It is conceivable that two people agree in their assessment of the facts relating to the circumstances of the deed, but come to completely different judgments in the evaluation. History and literature are full of such different evaluations. A classic example would be the murder of a tyrant by which an oppressed people want to free themselves. Further examples would be Brutus from history and Raskolnikow from literature. In all cases, every moral argumentation leads to the attempt to influence the attitude of another and to motivate him to imitate or reject the deed. However—as Ayer summarizes his meta-ethical position—judging morally is not the task of the moral philosopher. Metaethics remains neutral towards moral judgments. Its task is the analysis of such judgments. This means: “To analyze moral judgments does not mean to make such judgments oneself ” (see quotation). Charles Leslie Stevenson (1908–1979) represents the position of emotivism within metaethics, most clearly in his work Facts and Values. Studies in Ethical Analysis published in 1963. But already in an article published in 1937 in the journal Mind he points to the emotive meaning of moral expressions. He is in the tradition of Hume, when he transforms the difference of ‘being’ and ‘ought’ into that of ‘conviction’ and ‘attitude’. While convictions refer to being-sentences, i.e. have factual content, attitudes express moral feelings, evaluations and demands, in short, what is desirable or ought to be. Stevenson makes the difference of both approaches to reality clear with an example: “When someone says to him that he should not steal, he does not just want to make him understand that people disapprove of theft. Rather, he tries to influence him to disapprove of theft. This moral judgment has a quasi-imperative power. If this power becomes effective through suggestion and is intensified by the tone, it allows one to begin with the influence, the

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modification of his attitudes without further ado” (in: Grewendorf/Meggle 1974, 122). The example shows how language is used in different ways. Stevenson distinguishes two basic ways. The one preferred by science consists in “reporting, clarifying and communicating beliefs” (ibid., 124). The other has the purpose of “venting our feelings (interjections) or evoking moods (poetry) or urging people to action or attitudes (rhetoric): / I will call the first type of use ‘descriptive’, the second ‘dynamic’” (ibid., 124 f.). As clear as this distinction may seem to be, it is by no means so in everyday language use. In many cases, statements have a descriptive form but a very dynamic character. For example, if someone says to another: “You lied to her” (ibid., 127), this is, in terms of form, a descriptive statement, but in the way we use our language, it is a dynamic statement with a strong moral value judgment. It has the character of a disapprobation. If the speaker wants to reduce the dynamic character, he says it “at least not without a broad smile” (ibid.), or he uses other descriptive formulas. The ambivalence of descriptive and dynamic language use becomes particularly clear with the word ‘good’. The word can be used to make a statement about the quality of a thing or a matter. At the same time, however, it is hardly possible to avoid the positive attitude. The statements “That’s good” and the other “But I don’t like it at all ” appear contradictory (cf. ibid., 128). When exchanging opinions, convictions and attitudes are interwoven with each other. In order to change someone’s attitude, it can therefore be helpful to change his convictions. Stevenson gives the following example: A wants to go to the movies, B to the symphony. A can try to change B’s attitude by pointing out descriptively that a movie with a certain actor is playing in the cinema. He knows that B appreciates this. Stevenson comes to the following generalization: “Attitude divergence can be rooted in conviction divergence. That is: Divergence in attitudes would often disappear if the opponents knew the nature and effects of the object of their attitude exactly. In this respect, divergence in attitudes can be eliminated by achieving agreement in convictions—and this can in turn be achieved empirically” (ibid., 133). In this case, but only here, empirical methods can help to overcome differences in attitude. This could also be transferred to more significant social conflicts, such as the question of establishing “unemployment benefits” and others (cf. ibid., 134). It opens up the perspective of making scientific arguments productive in public and political opinion differences. Nevertheless, the reference to methods of influencing opinion is an unsatisfactory answer for many to the question of what is meant by ‘good’. People

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want to know what is ‘true’ in terms of good. Stevenson’s answer is: “I don’t understand. What is supposed to be the content of this truth? Because I don’t remember any Platonic idea, and I don’t even know what I could be trying to remember. I don’t find any undefined property and I don’t even know what to look for. And the ‘evident’ expressions of reason that so many philosophers have mentioned seem, on closer inspection, to be expressions of their respective (if any) reason; at least not of mine” (ibid., 136). The conclusion is: It is emotions that determine our moral attitudes and not reason.

IV Practical Reason—The Ethics of Duty

The duty ethic is based on practical reason. It says what a reasonable being should do. Its goal is a social order in which reason prevails. This is achieved when everyone fulfills the duty that reason prescribes to him. In contrast, the happiness ethic says what a person pursues and wants according to his nature. Both concepts of ethics seem to exclude each other. Kant has not less than Fichte rejected the eudaimonistic ethic. The argument is that, on the one hand, happiness cannot be binding for all people anyway, and on the other hand, this ethic puts one’s own well-being in the center. It therefore contradicts the strict requirements of practical reason. But the accusation of the irrationality of human striving for happiness does not hit the core of ancient happiness ethic. In the condemnation of a happiness that is based only on pleasure, Plato does not lag behind Kant’s criticism. He sees in the rule of reason over sensuality the standard for a good life. Likewise, for Aristotle the life oriented towards reason has priority over the life of pleasure and even over political practice. And finally, even Epicurus, who represents a hedonistic ethic, pleads for a moderate way of life that is oriented towards reason. The idea of being able to play the principle of reason against the principle of happiness does not hit the core of ancient happiness ethic at all. While it emphasizes that happiness is the ultimate goal of human action, it also emphasizes just as energetically that a human happiness can only be achieved by way of reason. What is overlooked in this context is, on the one hand, that there are no categorical imperatives in ancient happiness ethic, but only recommendations and advice. Even the saying collection of the so-called “seven wise © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer-Verlag GmbH, DE, part of Springer Nature 2023 W. Pleger, The Good Life, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-05969-7_5

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men” is full of them. A central recommendation is: “Keep measure!” In Kantian language usage, this is a hypothetical imperative, because it states under the consideration of the premise: “If you want to be happy, then keep measure!” Now this premise is not arbitrary, because everyone wants to be happy. Kant himself expressly agrees to this. If you look closely, the contrast between ancient happiness ethic and duty ethic is considerably relativized. For both, the striving for happiness belongs to human nature, and both emphasize the practical importance of reason. So the difference reduces to the determination of the way. If it is a question of the happiness ethic of recommendations, then in the duty ethic of categorical imperatives. A consultative ethic is opposed to an imperative one. This already applies to Cicero, the first of the authors treated here. As an ancient philosopher, he combines motifs of the ethics of happiness with the idea of duty, which arises primarily from the obligations of political action. He emphasizes that in the long run only reasonable action promises lasting happiness. In contrast to Aristotle, however, in his case the political-practical way of life already has priority over the theoretical. Kant’s duty ethics is based on the categorical imperative, which is an imperative of pure practical reason. It is based on the strictness of the exceptionless validity of natural laws. The human being realizes himself as a rational being only by making the imperative of practical reason his own in freedom. Kant connects the balance of the need for happiness, which is inseparably linked to human nature, and the worthiness of happiness with the religious principle of hope. For Fichte, practical reason is the guiding principle of his entire philosophy. Acting, the ego, considered as intelligence, sets the world as a nonego opposite to it, which becomes a “material of its duty”. His basic ethical thought is that reason, “and only she in the world of the senses”, should rule. This has consequences for the understanding of technology, politics and international law. The principle and goal of all action is “a moral world order”.

1 The Duties of the Person (Cicero) “Justice consists in not harming other people, in behaving tactfully, in not insulting them; in this one sees above all the nature of what is appropriate. […] The reason for action (officium ) but, which results from it, lies primarily on the way to harmony with nature and to its preservation. If we follow

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their lead, we will never go astray and join what is clear and distinct by nature, corresponds to the community of people, is enterprising and powerful. But the greatest effect of what is appropriate unfolds in the area we are talking about right now. For the movements not only of the body, which correspond to nature, but much more of the soul, which are also adapted to nature, must be considered valuable. For the power and nature of the soul have two forms of appearance: On the one hand they are determined by the driving force (appetitus ), Greek hormé, which pulls people here and there, on the other hand by reason (ratio ), which teaches and represents what is to be done and what is to be avoided. So it comes about that reason leads and the driving force obeys. Every action must be free of aimlessness and negligence, and one may not do anything for which one cannot give a convincing reason for action; that is how the definition of duty reads.” (Cicero: Philosophical Writings. Selected Works. Vol. I. Düsseldorf 2008, pp. 55 ff.) Cicero is born 106 BC in Arpinum. He studies law, rhetoric and philosophy in Rome. From 79 to 77 he goes on educational and study trips to Greece. With the successful trial against Verres his breakthrough to the “first speaker of Rome” takes place. In 63 he is consul. His activity is determined by the defense of the political overthrow attempts of Catilina. However, these actions are soon criticized severely and so 58/57 his banishment and his exile in Greece take place. First philosophical works arise. In the civil war (49–47) he is on the side of the Pompeians and in opposition to Caesar. In 47 his pardon by him takes place. After Caesar’s murder in 44 he regains an authority position in the Senate. However, his public attacks on former supporters of Caesar lead to his murder by them in 43 BC (cf. Stroh 2010; Pleger 2018, 214–219). Cicero’s work includes the areas of rhetoric, politics and philosophy. His lifetime falls philosophically into the era of Hellenism. To him belong the Stoics, the Epicureans and the Skeptics. In his ethics he largely represents Stoic positions. In accordance with the teachings of the Stoics, he emphasizes: “According to the Stoics, since everything that arises on earth is created for the benefit of mankind, and mankind is there for the sake of mankind, in order to be useful to each other, we are obliged to follow the lead of nature and to make the common good the center of our interests by giving and taking to” (Cicero 2008, I, 19). Important motives of his thinking are echoed here: the all-nature, which forms the basis of human life, the maxim to live in harmony with it, and the

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thought of fulfilling one’s duty in the interest of the common good. Ethics therefore plays the decisive role in his philosophy. All theoretical knowledge receives its meaning through its practical relevance. However, Cicero has become philosophically significant through another aspect. Due to his intensive study of Greek philosophy, he has appropriated its terminology and translated it into Latin. So he became the transmitter, interpreter and translator of Greek philosophy into the Latin West. The translation of the Greek word ‘prosopon’ for mask into Latin ‘persona’ also belongs to the context of the translation of the Greek language into Latin. He is mainly responsible for the fact that the concept of the person becomes a basic concept of philosophical anthropology. For him, the concept of the person becomes the guideline for a duty ethics, which is oriented towards a reasonable nature. Anthropology and ethics form a unit. Therefore, the representation of the development of the concept of the person is the prerequisite for the understanding of his ethics. It includes the following aspects: first, person as a role in a drama, second as an anthropological metaphor, third as a personal pronoun and fourth as a legal subject. First of all, it should be noted that—starting from Greek drama—the Romans in the first pre-Christian century, that is, at the time of Cicero, also let the actors appear in their tragedies and comedies with masks (Wilpert 1969, 472). The mask shows the role and hides the actor behind it. The play thematizes tragic and comic situations of life. It represents human dramas in an exemplary way. Therefore, it is not far-fetched to understand the world itself as a stage and the people acting on it as actors. The person he represents is therefore secondarily an anthropological metaphor for the role that everyone plays on the great world stage. The third aspect concerns the person in a grammatical-rhetorical context. The Roman grammarian Varro (born 116 BC) develops the concept of personal pronouns in the context of rhetoric. According to him, there are three speaker roles, “because there are three kinds of people, the one who speaks, the one to whom, and the one about whom is spoken.” (HWP 7, p. 272). The fourth aspect is addressed by Cicero, who was also active as a lawyer, using the example of his own activity. The person is the role someone takes in a trial. He describes his role as a lawyer as follows: “I myself usually try to make sure that everyone informs me about his matter […]. Usually I take the position of the opposing party, so that he represents his own and brings everything to light that he has thought about his matter. And so, when he has left, I take on three roles in one person in the highest serenity: my own, that of the opposing party, and that of the judge” (Cicero 2008, IV, 138).

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The further history of Roman law confirms this concept: The legal subject is the person and surprisingly not the human being (lat. homo ). The reason is: The “word ‘homo’ (actually ‘human being’) was often used by jurists to mean the slave and was therefore not very suitable as a general term for the individual human being” (HWP 7, p. 273). That is: ‘persona’ means role or ‘individual human being’ from case to case. In this dual meaning, the expression is used by Cicero. This is shown by his considerations on the concept of the person, which he develops in his work De officiis (On Duties) from the year 44 BC. First of all, he makes it clear that it is nature that endows man with the predicate ‘persona’. It is the wise, the reasonable Allnature that does this, and obviously for the good of man. Secondly, it becomes clear that not only one role is assigned to man, but four. The first meaning of ‘persona’ lies in its natural ability to reason. Man is different from animals in that he is a rational being. This Aristotelian definition of man now gets a new character under the sign of the role. Reason is no longer just a characteristic of human nature, a feature of its unchangeable nature, but is realized as a role in the play itself. But man is only rational if he fulfills the role assigned to him. It is connected with a duty. Cicero says: “It is common to all men, because we all share in reason and in this pre-eminence, by which we surpass the beasts, from which everything moral and appropriate is derived, and from which the methodical procedure in the investigation of the concept of duty is obtained” (Cicero 2008, I, 58). But rational action is not guaranteed. People who give in to their “pleasures” without restraint lose their “dignity” and put their role as a rational being at stake. The second meaning concerns the properties assigned to each individual, such as physical characteristics and abilities, and in particular their mental skills. All these properties are assigned to man by nature, and that too to each individual in a special way. They are the unmistakable features that make him a unique human being. Cicero attaches a moral maxim to this knowledge: “Everyone should recognize his individual talent and judge himself strictly as to his good and bad qualities” (ibid., 61 f.). The third meaning includes the position of man in society. It is assigned to him by chance and circumstances. Some of them he already brings with him at his birth, such as nobility and occasionally wealth; others he acquires during his lifetime, such as a position as king, general and other honorary positions, as well as the necessary means of power (cf. ibid., 62). What is decisive is that only here the term ‘persona’ social role means.

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The fourth meaning finally includes the goals we pursue in our lives. He says: “Which role we want to play ourselves depends on our own will” (ibid.). It is the role we take on in society. Cicero is thinking primarily of professional roles. He names three activities that are associated with these roles: philosophy, the activity of the lawyer and the profession of the speaker. Cicero’s ethics are based on the idea of a natural life (see quotation). How much his thinking prefers the categories of practical reason to those of theoretical reason becomes already clear when he names and explains the “four sources” of morality. The “entire morality”: “proceeds from knowledge [cognitio ], social competence [communitas ], inner independence [magnanimitas ] and a sense of the right measure [moderatio ]” (ibid., 80). These four sources do not have the same importance for answering moral questions. Cicero emphasizes: “It is therefore generally accepted that the duties arising from social competence correspond more to human nature than those resulting from knowledge […]. For knowledge and the consideration of nature are certainly inadequate and imperfect if no corresponding action follows. But this action becomes particularly clear when it is used for the good of humanity. Therefore, it refers to the community of all human beings. For this reason, it must have a higher significance thanthe mere knowledge” (ibid., 80 f.). Human action comprises two aspects: the “moral” oriented towards duty and the “useful” oriented towards happiness. Cicero tries to make it clear that both aspects do not contradict each other, but form a reasonable unity. This is shown by the points he mentioned. He develops them on the basis of a hierarchy of nature. The individual levels correspond to levels of morality, in which a progressive sublimation can be seen. This ranges from the physical area of life support via the political-practical to the theoretical and finally to the aesthetic. Together they form the ensemble of “aspirations” and “duties” of a “natural life”. At the top of such a life is self-preservation. Cicero explains: “First of all, it is given to every living being by nature that it protects its life and its body and everything […], which is necessary for life, such as food, shelter and so on” (ibid., 14). In second place is reproduction: “It is also common to all living beings that they have the urge [appetitus ] to unite sexually in order to reproduce and a pronounced care for the descendants” (ibid.). The third aspect concerns the life planning that humans carry out in contrast to animals, which are bound to the present: “Because humans, however, have reason, with which they perceive the consequences of their actions, see the causes of their actions, […] compare similarities and connect future with

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present conditions and link them, they overview the course of their whole life at once and prepare everything that is necessary to lead this life” (ibid.). The fourth aspect concerns the formation of communities: “With the help of reason, the same nature connects humans with humans to a language and life community […] and drives them to […] take care of everything that contributes to a demanding life and to subsistence” (ibid., 14 f.). The fifth aspect concerns the striving for truth: “A special feature of humans is their search and discovery of truth. […] From this it is evident that everything that is true, simple and pure corresponds most to the essence of humans” (ibid., 15). The sixth point concerns the striving for superiority and autonomy. It is clear that “a mind well equipped by nature does not want to obey anyone except the one who either gives good advice or instructs or, for the sake of utility, gives just and lawful orders” (ibid.). Finally, there is a striving for order and beauty that is unique to humans. It is “by no means unimportant that humans, as the only living beings, feel what order is, what is appropriate and what is the measure in words and deeds. For this reason, no other living being experiences beauty, grace and harmony of parts in everything that is perceived by the sense of sight” (ibid.). All of these natural strivings together result in the “moral” (cf. ibid., 16). Although there is also a striving for one’s own advantage, there is no contradiction between it and the moral, because in the long run the moral always proves to be the greater advantage (cf. ibid., 105). The relationship between utility and morality is a central theme of Cicero’s ethics. The thesis is: The truly useful is also the natural. Cicero develops this thought as follows: “If, therefore, any appearance of utility appears before your eyes, you will be impressed by it. But if, as soon as you think about it thoroughly, you see the reprehensibility that attaches to the thing, […] then you must not only disregard the utility, but also realize that there can be no utility where there is reprehensibility. But if nothing is as unnatural as reprehensibility […] and if nothing is as natural as utility, then utility and reprehensibility can by no means be in the same thing at the same time” (ibid., 145). Cicero’s fundamental ethical conviction is that reason and nature form a unity. Therefore, the maxim of a natural life is identical with that of a reasonable one. In addition to these elementary ethical considerations, Cicero develops a kind of casuistry in which he discusses criminal, civil and international law aspects of his ethics in a variety of individual cases, some of which are mentioned. The first concerns the unlawful appropriation of foreign property. For Cicero, this is a reprehensible act that goes far beyond the injustice

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to the victim. He says: “For such an action leads from the outset to the destruction of human community and connection. If, namely, we are such that everyone robs or injures a fellow human being for his own benefit, then human community, which is highly natural, will inevitably tear itself apart” (ibid., 139). The injury of even one person is an injury to all humanity. Seeing the individual action in the context of humanity has the following positive consequence for him: “Therefore, one principle must apply to all of them, that the benefit of each individual and the benefit of humanity as a whole are identical; if each individual only pursues his own benefit, then human community as a whole will dissolve” (ibid., 141). Conversely, the help demanded by reasonable nature towards one’s fellow human being leads to the general benefit. This means: “If, in addition, nature prescribes to man that he must care for man, whoever he may be, solely for the reason that he is a man, then it follows from this that, in accordance with the same nature, the benefit of all men is shared” (ibid.). Cicero develops universal principles of humanity in his ethical considerations, which also transcend national borders. He emphasizes: “Those who claim to take their fellow citizens into account but do not care about strangers tear the all-embracing community of humanity apart; if this is abolished, then benevolence, generosity, goodness and justice are also eliminated” (ibid., 142). His commitment to an all-embracing humanity makes his judgment about the enemies of humanity all the more severe. They include tyrants at the top. He remarks: “We have no community with tyrants; on the contrary, there is the sharpest separation between us and them; therefore, it is not against nature to rob, to kill, if one can, it is honorable, and this destructive and godless brood must be completely expelled from the community of humanity” (ibid., 143 f.). The situation is different in the law of war. This means: “The law of war and the reliability of the oath must also be observed towards the enemy as a rule” (ibid., 181). But there are also exceptions: “For example, it is not fraud if you do not hand over a price negotiated for your life to robbers, and not even if you have sworn it, but have not fulfilled it. Because a pirate is not a war opponent, but a common enemy of all people” (ibid.). The second exception concerns the following case: “If the one who gave you money to keep wanted to wage war against his own fatherland, would you give him back the money entrusted to you?” Cicero’s answer is: “I do not think so, because you will act against the community to which you are most obliged to love. So a lot of things that seem to be natural from a moral point of view, under certain circumstances, are not moral” (ibid., 175 f.). Cicero notes: “If the

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circumstances change, the duty changes and does not stay the same” (ibid., 23). The observance of moral duties also includes compliance with civil law. Cicero chooses a business transaction as an example. He argues that when selling a house, the seller is obliged to inform the buyer of known defects such as health-threatening building materials that could reduce the purchase price; because otherwise the buyer would be “a victim of deceitful deception” (ibid., 154). The same applies to real estate. Cicero emphasizes: “It is unalterably stipulated by our civil law that in all real estate transactions the errors must be named which are known to the seller” (ibid., 159). An issue of international law concerns the avoidance of war and the preservation of peace. For him there is another special condition: “In my opinion, one must always take care of a peace that does not expect any secret intentions” (ibid., 25). This means that short-term tactical considerations must not play a role in a peace treaty, but a lasting state of peace. Cicero’s thoughts on the treatment of slaves are also noteworthy. Although he does not yet plead for the abolition of slavery, he does plead for humane treatment: “But let us not forget that even the lowest must receive justice. But the lowest are the slaves; those who advise treating them like wage workers give good advice: We demand performance from them and give them appropriate wages” (Cicero 2008, I, 29). For Cicero, the central concept is that of humanitas, i.e. “humanity” (ibid., 38). He emphasizes: Anyone who, instead of serving the “common good”, only thinks of his “personal advantage”, thereby shows “a bestial brutality that is far removed from any humanity” (ibid.). This thought finds expression in the remarkable ethical appeal: “We must cultivate, protect and preserve the all-embracing natural community and the close association of the entire human race” (ibid., 78). With this plea, he becomes a co-founder of an ethics of universal humanity and an early advocate of general human rights. What is characteristic of Cicero’s thinking is that there is no opposition between an ethics of happiness and an ethics of duty. The naturally lived life guarantees happiness and at the same time corresponds to the commandment of reason. Cicero’s history of reception is sustainable and diverse (cf. Stroh 2010, 122). As a rhetorically skilled writer, he shaped the style of subsequent generations. His translations of philosophical basic concepts from Greek into Latin became indispensable for the history of philosophy. The concept of the person was adopted by authors of the New Testament and acquired central importance in later Christian theology. Similarly, aspects of his Stoic ethics became part of the Christian self-understanding. With Thomas Aquinas

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there are similarities in the thought of the correspondence of the natural and moral order of rank. The concept of duty was continued and radicalized by Kant. The thoughts of humanity and human rights worked through humanism and the Enlightenment to the present.

2 The Categorical Imperative (Kant) “The categorical imperative is therefore only one, namely this: act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law. If now from this one imperative all the imperatives of duty can be derived as their principle, then we can, although we leave it undecided whether what is called duty is not an empty concept at all, at least show what we think by it and what this concept wants to say. Because the generality of the law, according to which effects occur, is what actually nature in the most general sense (in terms of form), i.e. the existence of things, insofar as it is determined by general laws, the general imperative of duty could also be formulated as follows: act in such a way that the maxim of your action could become a general natural law through your will. ” (Immanuel Kant: Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals. Vol. IV. Darmstadt 1998, 51) Kant, who came from a family of craftsmen, was born in Königsberg in 1724. He attended the pietistic Friedrichskollegium in his hometown. The ‘heartfelt piety’ cultivated in Pietism has significantly influenced Kant in terms of its moral intensity. Kant remains connected to his hometown throughout his life. He studied philosophy, mathematics and natural sciences at the university in Königsberg. From 1746 to 1755 he worked as a tutor in various families in the Königsberg area. After his dissertation and another writing, Kant became a privatdozent in philosophy, natural sciences, physical geography and theology at the University of Königsberg in 1755. In 1770 Kant was appointed professor of metaphysics and logic at the university there and in 1786 and 1788 he was its rector. Kant died in Königsberg in 1804 (cf. Drescher 1974; Schultz 1972; Pleger 2018, 68–73). Kant’s thinking is not only indebted to Pietism and Stoicism, but also to the Enlightenment to a significant extent. The principle of the autonomy of reason, the idea of progress, freedom of opinion and the respect for civil rights are essential elements of this approach. Kant has devoted a separate

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writing to answering the question: What is Enlightenment? His answer is: “Enlightenment is man’s release from his self-incurred immaturity” (Kant 1998 VI, 53). Its motto is: “Sapere aude! Have the courage to use your own reason!” (ibid.) But this courage is lacking in a large part of humanity. Therefore, it is difficult for the individual to free himself from this immaturity. Kant sees the way out in the following: “But that a public enlightens itself is more likely; yes, if one only leaves it the freedom, it is almost unavoidable” (ibid., 54). It is the principle of publicity to which Kant attributes the decisive factor in the process of enlightenment. She finally leads—so his conviction—also to a reform of the political conditions (Irrlitz 2015, 12). However, Kant’s thinking also goes beyond the program of the Enlightenment. The demand to use one’s own reason does not make the examination of one’s own reasoning powers superfluous, but rather makes it absolutely necessary. The examination of the performance capability of the human mind therefore becomes a central philosophical concern for Kant. It forms the core of his theoretical philosophy. His practical philosophy takes up an equally important place. A third focus is his aesthetics and his philosophy of religion. In his lecture on Logic, Kant developed the scope of his philosophy along the guidelines of the following questions: “1) What can I know?—2) What should I do? 3) What may I hope? 4) What is man? The first question is answered by Metaphysics, the second by Moral, the third by Religion, and the fourth by Anthropology. In essence, however, all of this could be counted as anthropology, because the first three questions relate to the last one” (Kant III, 448). With his considerations on anthropology, Kant joins the relationship between body and soul developed by Plato. For Kant, man is a ‘citizen of two worlds’, which he describes as mundus sensibilis and mundus intelligibilis (cf. Kant II, 279 note.). The first comprises the realm of sensibility, the second the realm of reason and rationality. While it is the task of reason to ‘bring the sensible representations under rules’, it is the task of reason to ‘distinguish the world of the senses from the world of reason, but thereby to delineate the boundaries of reason itself ’ (Kant IV, 88). As a living being, man belongs to the experiential ‘world of the senses’ and, as a rational being, has part in the intelligible world through his thoughts. Kant concludes: “For this reason, a rational being must regard itself, as an Intelligence (that is, not from the side of its lower powers), not as belonging to the world of the senses, but as belonging to the world of reason; consequently, it has two points of view from which it can observe itself, and laws of the use of its powers, consequently of all its actions, first, insofar as it belongs to the world of the senses, under natural laws (heteronomy),

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second, as belonging to the intelligible world, under laws that, independent of nature, are not empirically, but only founded in reason” (ibid.). As a “rational living being” he is determined by a conflict, because he unites the sensuality of all living beings and the rationality of the “intelligible world” in himself (cf. Kaulbach 1988, 45). The problem of dualism continues in the field of ethics. Here, sensibility and practical reason face each other. The area of sensibility is determined by strivings and needs. It is primarily the need for happiness that motivates people to act. The need for happiness is so deeply rooted in people that they can never do without it. Kant remarks: “To be happy is the necessary desire of every reasonable but finite being, and thus an unavoidable determining ground of its faculty of desire” (Kant IV, 133). But it is primarily aimed at one’s own welfare, it too often places ‘dear me’ at the center of its desires, it is selfish. Practical reason is to be seen as the opponent, which claims people as a reasonable being. It urges him to check whether the principles of his actions, i.e. his maxims, correspond to the law of practical reason. The laws of practical reason are not oriented towards the welfare of the individual, but towards whether an action can be a special case of a universally valid law. The model for Kant’s concept of law is, on the one hand, the idea of non-contradiction, which stems from logic, and on the other hand the universality of natural laws. Just as general laws apply in nature and without exception, so human action should obey general laws. Egoism, exceptions and privileges, special preferences and inclinations have no place in it. The formulations of the categorical imperative, which express these thoughts, are: “Act only according to that maxim by which you can also will that it become a universal law” and “Act as if the maxim of your action were to become through your will a universal natural law” (see quotation). However, in the mentioned formulations a tension arises between the individual’s need for happiness oriented towards his own welfare and the universality formulated in the categorical imperative. While the need for happiness articulates itself as inclination, the categorical imperative has the character of a duty (cf. Paton 1962, 39). The concept of duty makes the ambivalent situation of man clear. If he were God or a pure rational being, he would have no duty, because he would always act reasonably (cf. Höffe 1996, 178). If he were only an irrational living being, he would not be able to understand the claim of practical reason. Only because he is this specifically ambivalent reasonable living being, duty

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is the demand for him to resist the sensual drives determined by natural laws and to make the law of practical reason his own. While ancient ethical luck holds on to the primacy of natural luck, it also makes it clear that only those who follow reason can be happy in the long run. For Kant, there is an insurmountable opposition between an eudaimonistic ethic, which is oriented towards the “principle of happiness” (cf. Kant IV, 506), and a duty ethic, which follows the dictates of practical reason. The pursuit of happiness has no moral quality for Kant, but only duty. With emphasis he says: “Duty! You exalted great name” (ibid., 209). He reverses the ancient relationship between happiness and reason by integrating the naturally conditioned striving for happiness itself into the canon of duty. He says: “To secure his own happiness is a duty (at least indirectly), because the lack of satisfaction with his state, in a crowd of many worries and in the midst of unsatisfied needs, could easily become a great temptation to transgress the duties ” (ibid., 25). However, acting out of duty, following the categorical imperative, requires freedom vis-à-vis the necessity of natural law. The question of whether man has this freedom becomes unavoidable. Kant has discussed this question in his Critique of Pure Reason and defines the “transcendental idea of freedom” there as “an absolute spontaneity of causes, a series of appearances that runs according to natural laws, of its own accord to begin” (Kant II, 428). It is an idea that cannot be empirically proven as such. Kant makes it clear, however, that practical reason cannot do without this idea, otherwise moral action would be impossible and man’s responsibility for his action would be destroyed. He says: “Every being that cannot act otherwise than under the idea of freedom is precisely thereby, in practical terms, really free, i.e. all laws that are inseparably connected with freedom apply to the same as if its will were also declared free in itself and in theoretical philosophy” (Kant IV, 83). But freedom does not mean arbitrariness. The free will, which is no longer subject to natural law, gives itself a law for action. In place of heteronomy, autonomy of the free will arises. By recognizing the duty that results from the categorical imperative, man does not subject himself to alien determination, but rather achieves the self-determination appropriate to a rational being. In this sense, Kant’s ethics is at the same time an ethics of freedom and a duty ethics. In it, the perfect and imperfect duties are distinguished as well as the duties towards oneself and towards others. The perfect duties have the character of prohibitions, the imperfect ones that of commandments. Kant develops the following schema of duties on the basis of four examples:

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Perfect

Imperfect

Against oneself

Prohibition Of suicide Prohibition Of the mendacious promise

Commandment Of developing one’s own talents Commandment Of helping in need towards others

Against others

The example of the perfect duty towards oneself means: A person who is tired of life and feels the inclination to put an end to his life may ask himself whether the action could become a general law. He will find that this is not the case, because the action is a contradiction of a purposive nature in itself. The example of a perfect duty towards others means: A mendacious promise cannot become a general law; for every lie is a contradiction in itself, since in it the words uttered and the actual will contradict each other. The example of an imperfect duty to oneself means: Although it is conceivable without contradiction that someone lets the talents slumbering in him, it cannot be the purpose of a nature thought of as reasonable. The example of an imperfect duty to others finally means: Although it is possible to think of a nature without contradiction in which everyone is only concerned with his own welfare, does not harm the other, but also does not help him in need. Again it applies: This action is incompatible with the idea of a reasonable nature. Now duty and inclination need not always be in contradiction. In some cases, a dutiful action also corresponds to a clever calculation. So a merchant will not cheat a customer because he does not want to lose him in the long run. Another helps a person in need out of a feeling of pity. But Kant does not count these cases as examples of moral action; because an action is only moral if the motive of the action is the categorical imperative. However, two problems now arise: On the one hand, the question arises of how the motive can be determined in the case of a single action. Kant’s surprising answer is: Not at all. No human being can recognize neither in another nor in himself the motive for a dutiful action. Motive research comes up against an inscrutable mystery (cf. Kant IV, 666). The second problem is no less serious: How is it possible at all that practical reason becomes the motive of an action? Even if it is assumed that man is intellectually able to test his action against the categorical imperative and he does so, this does not by any means ensure that this action will also be carried out. How can the strong motive of man to think only of his own welfare because of his sensuality be overcome by a reason whose realm is the Intelligible? Kant’s surprising answer is: The possibility for a reasonable action lies in the “respect for this practical law”. This respect is a feeling. In

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response to the objection that a feeling belongs to the realm of sensuality, Kant says: “If respect is just a feeling, it is not a feeling received by influence, but a feeling self-wrought by the concept of reason and therefore specifically distinguished from all feelings of the first kind, which can be brought about by inclination or fear. What I immediately recognize as a law for myself, I recognize with respect, which merely means the consciousness of the subordination of my will under a law, without the mediation of other influences on my senses” (Kant IV, 27 ff. note.). The feeling of respect is associated with the difficult question: How can reason “effect” a feeling that is, moreover, as Kant emphasizes, one that “breaks my self-love”? The reason why Kant conceived of a “feeling of respect” is that, as with any dualistic thinking, he needed an instance of mediation in order to bring the claim of “reason” to bear against the naturally given “self-love”. While feelings in general belong to the mundus sensibilis, Kant endows the feeling of respect for the law with a special status. It consists in the fact that it is a “feeling self-wrought” by reason. As such, the task of mediating between sensibility and reason is not only assigned to it, but also entrusted. Remarkably, Kant does not stop at the two aforementioned formulations of the categorical imperative. Rather, he comes to a formulation in which the human being him- or herself becomes the content. For this purpose, he draws on the distinction between person and thing that has been known since Roman times. Persons have their own legal status. They can represent themselves in court. Slaves, on the other hand, do not have this status. They are the property of their owner. They can be disposed of, like any other thing. Kant’s thesis is now that human beings are never things that can be disposed of at will, but that they must be called “rational beings persons” because their nature already distinguishes them as “objective purposes, i.e. things whose existence is an end in itself ” (Kant 1998 IV, 60). From this consideration he gives the following formulation to the categorical imperative: “Act in such a way that you always use humanity, both in your person and in the person of every other, at the same time as an end, never merely as a means” (ibid., 61). Three aspects deserve special attention: First, this form of the categorical imperative not only has a formal character, but also distinguishes a content from all others as morally significant. In contrast to things that always have only a relative value as a means to an end, man as a person has an absolute value (cf. ibid., 60). The second aspect concerns the thought that man should not only respect every other person, but also himself as an end in himself. Self-respect is a moral principle that refers to the “humanity” in one’s own person, i.e. to the fact that people are “rational beings”. Excluded from moral

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respect are thus all unreasonable or even criminal actions and purposes. The third aspect concerns Kant’s indication that man as a person is used as an end and never only as a means at the same time. Kant thus takes into account the fact that people of course always use other people as means, as teachers, as doctors, as merchants, etc. Morally excluded is only the reduction of the person to a means of satisfying own needs (cf. Kaulbach 1988, 73). Kant expands the thought of the person as an end in itself by asking about the ethical consequences that result from the interaction of these purposes. His answer is: The “ideal” of a “realm of purposes” (Kant IV 66) arises. This means from a moral point of view: Every person should consider himself as a member of a realm of purposes. His justification is: “But it belongs to a rational being as member of the realm of purposes, if it is indeed generally legislating in it, but also subject to these laws” (ibid.). This thought leads to a fourth formulation of the categorical imperative. It reads: “Act according to maxims of a member legislating for a merely possible realm of purposes” (ibid., 73). Kant has further elaborated the political consequences of this ideal in his work Zum ewigen Frieden (To Perpetual Peace). In his Critique of Practical Reason, Kant distinguishes between person and personality (cf. Pleger 2018, 236 ff.). This distinction sheds new light on the concept of person. It becomes clear, namely, that the term person by no means refers only to the moral subject, but also to the human being belonging to the “sensory world”. The personality, on the other hand, is that which “elevates the human being over himself (as part of the sensory world)” (Kant IV, 209). In this way, person and personality stand in opposition to each other. The personality is still above the person. This means that “the person, as belonging to the sensory world, is subject to her own personality, insofar as she also belongs to the intelligible world; since it is not to be wondered at if the human being, as belonging to both worlds” is to be seen (ibid., 210). The personality is the essence of the person. It is what Kant has called humanity in the person. In this sense, his statement is to be understood: “The human being is indeed unholy enough, but the humanity in his person must be holy to him” (ibid.). Insofar as the human being is a rational being as a person, he is “namely the subject of the moral law, which is holy, by virtue of the autonomy of his freedom” (ibid.). The personality is an “awe-inspiring idea” that is capable of preventing a human being from committing an immoral act and of protecting him from the fact that he “must despise himself in secret in his own eyes” Kant, Immanuel (ibid., 211; cf. Beck 1974, 208). The concept of the freedom of the person also forms the basis of Kant’s philosophy of law, which makes up the first part of his Metaphysics of Morals.

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The free will is decisive for the legal assessment of an action. Kant defines it as follows: “The freedom of the will is that independence of its determination by sensible impulses; this is the negative concept of it. The positive is: the ability of pure reason to be practical in itself ” (Kant IV 318). While the concept of the freedom of theoretical reason is “transcendental” because no examples of experience can be given for it, its “reality” is confirmed in practical use by the fact that the laws “of pure reason […] determine the will and prove a pure will in us” (ibid., 327). Kant distinguishes the moral assessment of an act of will from its legal assessment. An act is to be called moral if its motive can be traced back to the categorical imperative, legally if it is carried out in accordance with the law. Kant explains this distinction as follows: “The mere agreement or disagreement of an action with the law, without regard to the motive of the same, is called legality (legality); but that in which the idea of duty is at the same time the motive of the action, is called morality (morality) of the same” (ibid., 324). Ethical as well as legal principles have their common basis in practical reason. However, due to the differentiation of morality and law, it is necessary to formulate the principle of law in its own formulation. In analogy to the ethical imperative, the legal one is: “Act externally in such a way that the free use of your will can coexist with the freedom of everyone according to a general law” (ibid., 338). This legal imperative has a natural law basis, because it is based on the “principle of innate freedom” (ibid., 346). Finally, the ethical aspects of his ‘philosophical theology’ must be mentioned: Acting from reason makes man blessed (cf. Pleger 2018, 73). But the blessedness does not guarantee the attainment of happiness or bliss. Therefore it is conceivable that a person, despite all blessedness, remains unhappy in his life. Not infrequently the righteous man is denied happiness, while a criminal is favored by happiness. This gross imbalance violates the thinking of every moral person. But reason does not find a solution to this problem in this life. The longing for a person to be ‘eventually’ blessed in accordance with his blessedness is a hope and belongs as such in the field of religion. Kant formulates this thought, which cannot do without God, as follows: “For to be in need of happiness and worthy of it, yet not to be partakers of it, can in no wise consist with the perfect will of a rational being, which at the same time would have all power, if we could only imagine such a being for the purpose of experiment.” (Kant IV, 238). The unity of blessedness and bliss represents the “highest good”. It is connected with a hope that is directed towards life in the hereafter: “Therefore the highest good, practically, is only possible under the assumption of the immortality of the soul” (ibid., 252).

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In his writing The Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone from 1793, Kant addresses the question of the origin of evil. He rejects the explanation of the senses as well as the religious dogma of original sin (Kant IV, 689). In both cases, the freedom of man would be denied (Gerhardt 2002, 287). Nevertheless, there is in man an “inclination to evil” that is confirmed again and again by experience and history (Kant IV 675). He emphasizes that a person cannot be called evil because of his evil deeds. A person is evil through the “evil maxim” that guides his actions (ibid., 666). For this reason, it is not possible to definitely label a person as evil on the basis of experience, because “the maxims cannot be observed, not even in oneself ” (ibid.). Kant emphasizes that there is an “original moral disposition in us” that we “intensely feel” (ibid., 700). The question of why man turns away from the moral law and adopts evil maxims cannot be answered, because it is a free choice. This cannot have a cause, because then it would not be free (ibid., 679). The decision for a maxim is an “intelligible act” (ibid.). Kant explains this thought as follows: “What a person is or should be in a moral sense, good or evil, he must make himself or have made. Both must be an effect of his free will; otherwise it could not be attributed to him, therefore he could be neither morally good nor evil. If it is said: he is well created, this can only mean that he is created for the good, and the original disposition in man is good; the person is not himself by this, but, after he has taken the springs that contain this disposition into his maxim, or not (which must be left entirely to his free choice), he makes himself good or evil” (ibid., 694). Kant’s reception history in the field of ethics is unbroken to this day, even though utilitarianism and value philosophy came to different solutions. His draft of a league of nations Perpetual Peace from 1795 had a special effect (cf. Kant VI, 190–251). It served as a philosophical orientation at the founding of the League of Nations (see Chap. XII, 2).

3 Freedom and Duty (Fichte) “The ultimate goal of all actions of the morally good person in general and in particular of all his effects on the outside can be summarized in this formula: He wants reason, and only reason, to rule in the world of the senses. All physical force should be subordinate to reason.” But reason can only rule in reasonable beings and through them. Moral action always relates, even if it were to go directly to the unreasonable nature, yet at least indirectly to reasonable beings, and has only them as its

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intention, as will be shown further. As there are no rights in relation to the unreasonable nature, so too there are no duties in relation to it. It becomes a duty to work on it solely for the sake of reasonable beings. Accordingly—the morally good wants reason and morality to rule in the community of reasonable beings. It is not only the intention that only what is good and in accordance with reason should happen, that only legality should rule, but that it should happen according to the moral law, with freedom, as a result, that true morality should rule.” (Johann Gottlieb Fichte: The System of Ethics according to the Principles of the Doctrine of Science. Vol. II. Darmstadt 1962, 669) Johann Gottlieb Fichte is born in 1762 as the son of a craftsman in Rammenau in Upper Lusatia. An aristocratic patron enables him to study theology in Jena and Leipzig. This is followed by work as a tutor in Leipzig and Zurich. His study of Kantian philosophy prompts him to visit Kant in Königsberg in 1791. Fichte’s first work, Attempt at a Critique of All Revelation, is published through Kant’s mediation. Fichte is famous overnight when it becomes known that the author is not, as suspected, Kant, but Fichte. In 1794 he is appointed professor of philosophy in Jena. His essay On the Ground of Our Belief in a Divine World Government, published in 1798, ignites the so-called atheism dispute, which leads to his dismissal from office. Fichte moves to Berlin and gives private lectures there. After Prussia’s defeat in 1806 and the occupation of Berlin by Napoleon’s troops, he temporarily moves to Königsberg and Copenhagen, but returns to Berlin in 1807. In 1810 he is appointed dean of the philosophical faculty at the newly founded University of Berlin and in 1811 its first elected rector. He dies of typhus in 1814 (c.f. Jacobs 1998; Pleger 2018, 262–265). Fichte understands his philosophy as a transcendental idealism, which he assigns to practical reason (cf. Rohs 1991, 97). He clearly emphasizes the primacy of practical reason over theoretical reason: “We do not act because we recognize, but we recognize because we are determined to act; practical reason is the root of all reason” (Fichte 1954, 99). He understands his thinking as the completion of Kant’s philosophy (cf. Fichte 1967, 6). Kant’s transcendental subject is taken over by Fichte just as the thought that the connection of the manifold of representations to a unity is an act of reason. However, the categories of reason with Kant only refer to the formal structure of an object of experience, not to its content. The objects of experience are given to the subject as an appearance. He cannot create them. Behind

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the appearance of the object there is an unrecognizable ‘thing in itself ’ for Kant, the independence of which human reason has to respect. It is the thought of a thing in itself that ignites Fichte’s confrontation with Kant. The essential thoughts on this can be found in his Wissenschaftslehre (Foundation of the Entire). Fichte considers the thing in itself to be an unbearable and superfluous limitation of the freedom of thought. Even more: For him it is an expression of a dogmatic way of thinking that accepts the independence of matter. The dogmatist, who sees this as the basis of all experience, is mistaken. The thing in itself is not an object of experience at all, “for the system of experience is nothing other than the thinking accompanied by the feeling of necessity” (ibid., 14). The idealist represents the opposite of the dogmatist. For him, the freedom of the ego is the starting point of all considerations (cf. Schulz 1976, 263 ff.). Fichte characterizes the approach of the dogmatist as follows: “He denies the independence of the ego, on which the idealist builds, completely, and makes it merely a product of things, an accident of the world; the consistent dogmatist is necessarily also a materialist” (Fichte 1967, 17). Therefore, there is a fundamental dispute between the idealist and the materialist. How does the dispute end? According to Fichte, by the fact that the concept of the materialists fails, because they should prove the “transition from being to representation”; “they do not do this, nor can they do it” (ibid., 24). It is the vain attempt to “prove a continuous transition from matter to spirit” (ibid., 18). Fichte sees the dogmatic way of thinking as representing a deeper, ethically speaking, level of humanity. By emphasizing the priority and independence of things, the dogmatist makes himself into a thing. Fichte explains this way of thinking as follows: “Some, who have not yet risen to a full awareness of their freedom and absolute independence, find themselves only in the act of representing things; […] Their image is only thrown back at them by things, like in a mirror; if these are taken away from them, then their self is also lost at the same time […] Whoever is in fact only a product of things will never see themselves in any other way” (ibid., 20). This has a decisive ethical consequence; because for someone who makes himself into a thing, “debt and attribution […] have no meaning” (Fichte 1954, 25). But how can idealism be justified? The starting point is a reflection. The only task of the idealist is to pay attention to the activity of consciousness in the act of thinking. By reflecting on the act of his thinking, the thinker becomes aware that it is he himself who is thinking. Therefore, every act of thinking is an ‘I think’. In the act of thinking, “the I constructs itself as the

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subject of the respective act of thinking. That means: “That self-constructing I is no other than its own. It can only look at the given act of thinking in itself; and in order to be able to look at it, it must carry it out. It brings it about arbitrarily and with freedom within itself ” (Fichte 1967, 46). The I is not a being, not a substance that would form the basis of the respective act of thinking, but rather the I sets itself in the absolute act of thinking itself. All thinking is already an action. Fichte calls the intuition of the I in the execution of its acts of thinking intellectual intuition: He explains this as follows: “This intuition of itself in the execution of the act by means of which it comes into being, I call intellectual intuition. It is the immediate consciousness that I act, and what I act: it is that by means of which I know something because I do it” (ibid., 49). Intellectual intuition is a “fact of consciousness”, but strictly speaking not a “fact”, but a “factual action”. The principle of idealism therefore states: “I should start from the pure I in my thinking, and think of it absolutely autonomously, not as determined by things, but as determining things” (ibid., 53). But how does the pure I determine things? The pure I, which Fichte also calls absolute, is the cause of the non-I, which it sets, i.e. the cause of the world of experienced things. But it is the absolute I that is the cause of the non-I, and not an empirical I. For this reason, its settings are also not arbitrary, but follow their own necessity. This has the following decisive epistemological consequence: “If the results of a philosophy do not agree with experience, then this philosophy is certainly false; because it has not kept its promise to derive the entire experience from it, and to explain it from the necessary action of intelligence” (ibid., 34). Since for Fichte the theoretical reason is practically already in itself, the goal of practical reason is only a modification of the general principle of reason. Fichte says: “The ultimate goal of all actions of the morally good person […] can be summarized in this formula: He wants that reason, and only she in the world of the senses rule ” (see quotation). As for Kant the will is a central category of practical reason for Fichte. Fichte defines the will as “an absolutely free transition from indeterminacy to determinacy, with the consciousness of the same” (Fichte II, 552). He explains this transition as follows: “The ego, insofar as it wants, gives itself as an intelligence the object of its will by choosing one from the several possible ones, and the indeterminacy which the intelligence looks at and understands, rises to an equally thought and understood determinacy.[…] In short, the will is absolutely free, and an unfree will is an impossibility. If

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only man wants, then he is free; and if he is not free, then he does not want, but is driven. Nature does not produce a will” (ibid., 552 f.). As intelligence, the ego wants that reason rule in the world of the senses, as empirical ego it should. If man becomes aware of this ought, conviction arises in him that he acts in accordance with it. From this conviction follows the duty. It corresponds to a categorical imperative. It reads: “Act in accordance with your conviction of your duty” (ibid., 557). Fichte does not stop at the formulation of a general moral law, but refers it to the concrete situation and the power of judgment of the individual. This sharpens the problem to the question: How does the individual know that his conviction of his respective duty is not “erroneous”? How does the actor come to a correct judgment with regard to his duty? Fichte makes it clear that the power of judgment as a theoretical faculty alone cannot solve the problem. It can only be solved by a practical faculty. He defines it in contrast, but also in a certain analogy, to the aesthetic feeling as a moral-practical feeling. He says: “There would therefore be a feeling of truth and certainty as the sought-after absolute criterion of the correctness of our conviction of duty” (ibid., 561). The feeling of correctness forms the definitive conclusion of the achievements of the power of judgment. This means: “The theoretical faculties continue their course until they come across what can be approved; they only do not contain in themselves the criterion of its correctness, but this lies in the Practical, which is the first and highest in man, and his true nature” (ibid., 559 f.). What happens is a “immediate feeling […]. This feeling never deceives, for, as we have seen, it is only present when our empirical ego is in complete agreement with the pure one” (ibid., 563). Fichte explains with an example what it means to act in accordance with his conviction of duty. It is a fictional case that Kant has already discussed in his essay On a supposed right to lie from philanthropy (cf. Kant IV, 637–643). The case is as follows: Suppose an innocent fugitive finds refuge with a person. The question is: Does this person have the right to lie to the pursuer, who has murderous intentions? Kant’s answer is: No. Moreover, for him, the statement that the pursuer could have no right to the truth is “without sense” (ibid., 637). Fichte agrees with Kant’s judgment. He says: “By the way, the defense of the lie of necessity or of lies in general, for any good purpose, is without doubt the most nonsensical and at the same time the most wrong that has ever been discussed among people” (Fichte II, 681). While Kant is limited to the duty of the human being to always tell the truth, Fichte considers a variety of ways in which a “morally good person” could fulfill his duty. First, he points out that the person questioned could very well refuse to answer

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the question of the pursuer by referring to his recognizable evil intentions. In addition, he could involve him in a moral conversation and try to dissuade him from his intention. But if this should not succeed and the pursuer should turn against the person providing protection instead, then she would also have to accept this, “because as soon as human life is in danger, you no longer have the right to think about the safety of your own” (ibid., 683). Moreover, it would now also be the duty of the fugitive to come to the aid of his defender. And even if this did not happen, it would not be certain whether the defender, strengthened by the “enthusiasm” for a “good cause”, would not win the victory. But even if the defender were to lose and die, he would remain “saved from the danger of lies. So death goes before the lie, and the lie never comes” (ibid., 684). The example makes it clear that the subject is to be understood both theoretically and practically as an activity, and not as a being. The “morally good person” is a man of action, of practical engagement. Against this background, Fichte’s considerations on the “radical evil in man” are to be understood. Fichte sets the “inertia” of nature against the activity of reason. He says: “The nature as such, is to be ascribed a power of inertia” (ibid., 593). It is a power in so far as it must be “ascribed a quantum of tendency or power” in order to “remain what it is”. This power of inertia also exists in humans. This means: “Every human being, even the strongest and most active, has his own slothfulness […] and will have to fight against it all his life” (ibid., 594). This inertia becomes ethically significant because it also includes “an original inertia towards reflection and, as a result, towards acting according to this reflection”. This is—according to Fichte—“a true positive radical evil” (ibid., 593). This evil is overcome by “exceptional people”, for example those within religion, who are able to “act upon others to develop a sense of morality” (ibid., 599). In his essay “On the Ground of our Belief in a Divine World Government” Fichte interprets religion, similarly to Kant, as part of practical reason. He questions attempts of a proof of God’s existence (cf. Fichte III, 122). These attempts can, in his opinion, be carried out in two ways. One is the way of “pure science”. According to it, the world is “a self-justifying, self-completing, and therefore an organized and organizing whole, which contains the ground of all phenomena occurring in it within itself and in its immanent laws” (ibid., 123 f.). To assume an “intelligence” as “author” of such an understood world is, according to him, “total nonsense” (ibid., 124), because it is completely incomprehensible how it is possible that the concepts of an intelligence are transformed into matter through a

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“creation out of nothing” or even modify already existing “eternal matter”. There is no way to get from the “sensory world” to the “supersensory world” assumed by faith. The second way is the transcendental. On it, the aforementioned difficulties disappear, because for him there is “no world existing in and of itself: in everything we behold, we behold nothing but the reflection of our own inner activity” (ibid.). The “supersensible world” is found in one’s own self. Fichte explains: “I find myself free from all influence of the sensuous world, absolutely active in myself, and through myself, consequently, as a power elevated above all sensuousness. But this freedom is not indeterminate; it has its purpose: it does not receive the same from without, but rather posits it through itself. I myself and my necessary purpose are the supersensible” (ibid., 125). An ethically and natural law-based restriction only receives this freedom through the freedom of other people. Fichte explains this thought in Foundations of Natural Right as follows: “I posit myself as reasonable, i.e. as free. […] I posit other free beings in the same undivided action. I thus describe a sphere of freedom through my imagination, into which several beings divide themselves. […] I restrict myself in my appropriation of freedom by also leaving freedom for others. The concept of right is thus the concept of the necessary relation of free beings to each other” (Fichte II, 12). The necessary purpose of all free beings is a “rational purpose”. Its content is “a moral world order”. The self is immediately certain of it. It is a certainty that itself cannot be derived from a higher principle and which can therefore also be called faith, because “the element of all certainty is faith” (Fichte III, 126). Fichte formulates this rational faith as follows: “This is the true faith; this moral order is the Divine that we accept. It is constructed through righteousness” (ibid., 129). In the perspective of the philosophical faith in the final goal of reason, the view of the sensuous world changes. “Our world is the sensuous material of our duty” (ibid.). At the same time, however, the understanding of the traditional concept of God also changes. Fichte remarks: “The faith just derived is also the faith entirely and completely. That living and effective moral world order is itself God; we need no other God, and can grasp no other. There is no reason in reason to go out from that moral world order, and, by means of a conclusion from the founded to the foundation, to posit another being, as the cause thereof, as God” (ibid., 130). This thesis sparked the atheism dispute (cf. Rohs 1991, 111). Practical reason now also provides the guideline for looking at world history. It aims at the “absolute demand for a better world” (Fichte 1954,

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101). Fichte remarks: “I cannot imagine the present situation of humanity as the one in which it could now remain; I cannot imagine it as its whole and final determination. Then everything would be dream and deception; and it would not be worth living, and this always recurring, purposeless and meaningless game with having been driven. Only to the extent that I may regard this state as a means of a better one, as a point of transition to a higher and more perfect one, does it gain value for me” (ibid., 101 f.). Three aspects determine his human utopia: First, it is the area of securing the natural livelihoods of people. The reason is: “Still our race struggles with difficulty to obtain its subsistence and its continuation from the reluctant nature. Still, the greater part of mankind is bent over hard work throughout their lives to provide food and thinking for the small half ” (ibid., 102 f.). But crop failures, “floods, storms, volcanoes” and other disasters repeatedly frustrate the efforts of man. Fichte designs a technical utopia when he says: “So nature should become more clearer and transparent to us up to its most innermost, and the enlightened and armed human power should easily master it […]. Gradually, no greater expenditure of mechanical work should be required than that of the human body for its development, training and health, and this work should cease to be a burden;—because the reasonable being is not destined to be a load carrier” (ibid., 104 f.). The second aspect concerns the internal constitution of the state. Fichte designs the model of a contract theory. Not the feudal lords, but only the citizens themselves can “found a true state in which each individual, through the concern for his own security, is irresistibly forced to spare the security of all others without exception” (ibid., 109 f.). The third aspect concerns international law. Fichte’s consideration of this is as follows: If the state has become a matter for its citizens, war will also come to an end; because “that a whole nation should decide to overrun a neighboring country with war for the sake of plunder is impossible, because in a state in which everyone is equal, plunder would not be the booty of a few, but would have to be distributed equally among everyone, but this share of the individual would never be worth the effort of war to him” (ibid., 110 f.). Following Kant’s essay “Perpetual Peace”, Fichte is convinced that the concern for one’s own security will eventually lead to the formation of free states everywhere and the spread of culture, freedom and general peace. Peace is the prerequisite for the progressive understanding of peoples and the general dissemination of knowledge, i.e. that “everything useful that has been found at one end of the earth will immediately be known and

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communicated to everyone” (ibid., 108 f.). This process of general “education” will eventually “gradually embrace the whole world” (ibid., 111). Fichte’s utopia finally becomes a vision that goes beyond all previously known “earthly” goals. It goes beyond “obedience” to them, i.e. “it must therefore be an otherworldly world for which it serves” (ibid., 117). Our actions themselves, insofar as they fulfill their duty, which reason imposes on them, are already oriented towards an otherworldly, eternal goal. Fichte formulates this relationship as follows: “But what is it that we actually and purely believe in the world of the senses? Nothing else than that from our faithful and unbiased performance of duty in this world a life promoting our freedom and morality will develop in all eternity” (ibid., 138). But whoever orients himself in his actions according to it lives “already in it” (ibid., 119). Fichte’s history of reception begins with a confrontation with Hegel and Schelling. His idealism becomes the starting point for their own system designs. A culmination of his religious-critical considerations can be found with Feuerbach and Marx. A remarkable agreement, although without a history of reception, is shown by Husserl’s transcendental idealism. Sartre continues Fichte’s radical concept of freedom under existentialist auspices.

V Happiness and Utility—Utilitarianism

The term utilitarianism is derived from the Latin word utilitas, which means, inter alia, ‘usability’, ‘usefulness’, ‘benefit’ and ‘advantage’. The utilitas communis is the ‘public good’. The utilitarian ethic is oriented towards a broader concept. This includes pleasure and displeasure, pain and painlessness, joy and suffering, and finally happiness and benefit. The maxim of “the greatest happiness of the greatest number” at the core of this ethic can already be found with Hutcheson (cf. Chap. III, 1). But only Bentham makes it the guiding principle of a utilitarian ethic. The theoretical elements of this ethic are diverse. In contrast to a principle-based ethic in the sense of Kant, the idea that when judging an action, above all its consequences, should be taken into account. This affects both the immediate consequences of the individual action discussed by action utilitarianism and the long-term general consequences of rule-compliant behaviour discussed in rule utilitarianism. In any case, the utilitarian ethic is a consequence ethic. With the concept of happiness, approaches from the ancient ethics of happiness are taken up. It is the idea that everyone strives for happiness and that this belongs to his nature. This striving is one of the unshakeable and non-justifiable prerequisites of human action. Human behaviour can be described and empirically captured under this condition. However, what is new in the utilitarian ethic is the idea that happiness can not only be scientifically captured, but also quantified. This task was mainly undertaken by Bentham. He developed the concept of a happiness calculus, in which the quantum of pleasure and pain should not only be taken into account for the individual, but even for whole © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer-Verlag GmbH, DE, part of Springer Nature 2023 W. Pleger, The Good Life, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-05969-7_6

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societies, and finally for all mankind. It is noteworthy that the pleasure and displeasure of animals should also be taken into account. The determination of the total amount of happiness should be made with the methods of arithmetic. As a legally trained thinker, he also saw it as his task to punish criminals who endanger the general welfare of society in a quantitatively determined manner. Mill joins his approach to Bentham in many respects. However, he differs from him significantly in two points. He considers the quantitative method to be inadequate and replaces it with the qualitative differentiation of pleasure and pain. This also has an impact on the consideration of animal pleasure and pain. The mental pleasures that a human is capable of far exceed those of an animal. On the other hand, the idea of duty enters his ethics to a greater extent than with Bentham. The general welfare of humanity is not simply a sum of the happiness of all individuals. Pursuing it becomes a duty. However, the utilitarian thought is not abandoned; because in the long run only the orientation towards the common good also increases one’s own. In his political ethics, two topics become important for Mill. On the one hand, it is the concept of a liberal state in which the individual enjoys the greatest possible civil freedoms and, on the other hand, the goal of equality of women, which lies far ahead of its time. Singer draws on elements from Bentham and Mill for his approach. He derives the animal welfare thought directly from Bentham, the duty thought rather from Mill. Central to the animal welfare demanded by him is his thesis that he transfers the term of person, which is important for the self-understanding of humans, to higher mammals, while excluding it for infants and mentally disabled people. This is associated with his vehemently disputed plea for a right to infanticide, i.e. killing of severely damaged newborns. He follows the duty thought of Mill with his demand for the worldwide fight against poverty by the rich nations.

1 The Greatest Happiness of the Greatest Number (Bentham) “The value of a quantity of Joy or Grief can be measured […] If one wants to determine the general tendency of an action which affects the interests of a community in an exactly precise manner, one proceeds as follows. One begins with a person, whose interests seem to be affected most immediately by such an action, and determines: a) the value of the observable joy,

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which seems to be caused primarily by the action; b) the value of every grief, which seems to be caused primarily by it; […]. e) One adds up the values of all joys on one side and all griefs on the other side. If the side of joy prevails, the tendency of the action is overall good in view of the interests of this individual person; if the side of grief prevails, its tendency is overall bad. f ) One determines the number of persons, whose interests seem to be affected, and repeats the above-mentioned procedure with regard to each one of them. […]. One draws the balance; if the balance is on the side of joy, the resulting tendency of the action is generally good for the affected total number or community of individuals; if it is on the side of grief, the resulting tendency is generally bad for the same community.” (Jeremy Bentham: An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation. In: Otfried Höffe (Ed.): Introduction to Utilitarian Ethics. Tübingen 1992, 79 ff.) Jeremy Bentham is born in 1748 as the son of a wealthy lawyer in London. He studies law and philosophy in Oxford. However, he soon breaks off his activity as a lawyer because he feels more attracted to the natural sciences. Isaac Newton and Carl von Linné become intellectual role models for him. Closely connected with the thoughts of the French Enlightenment, he receives the French citizenship in 1792 next to George Washington, Friedrich Schiller and Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi. Together with James Mill, the father of John Stuart Mill, he develops the theoretical concept of the Radicals, a political movement, which exerts a lasting influence on the English domestic policy and will later lead to the foundation of the Liberal Party. Their principles include the development of democracy and the reform of criminal law. Bentham dies in London in 1832 (cf. Wolf in: Pieper 1992, I, 154 ff.). Bentham builds on the ethics of Hutcheson: As with Hutcheson, for him nature forms the basis of ethics, he adopts from him the maxim of the “greatest happiness of the greatest number” and he tries to introduce mathematical models for the calculation of the “total sum” of happiness. These apply equally to the areas of morality, politics and law. In doing so, he clearly distances himself from Hutcheson. He rejects Hutcheson’s concept of a moral feeling strictly. In his fundamental ethical work An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation from the year 1789 he formulated his basic thought as follows: “Nature has placed humanity under the rule of two sovereign rulers—pain and pleasure. It is up to them alone to show us what we should

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do, as well as to determine what we will do. Both the standard for right and wrong and the chain of causes and effects are anchored to their throne. They rule us in everything we do, what we say, what we think: any effort we make to shake off our yoke will only serve to prove and confirm it. […] The principle of utility recognizes this yoke and takes it over for the foundation of that system whose goal is to erect the edifice of happiness through reason and right” (in: Höffe 1992, 55 f.). Bentham relies on this concept, inter alia, on the French materialist Claude Adrien Helvetius (1715–1771), who in his work On the Spirit (1758) believed that he could explain the sensuality of man and the hedonistic motives that move him according to the model of Newtonian physics. We get the impression that he, like Newton, represents a deterministic materialism that ties man to nature with the “chain of causes and effects”. But this thought is relativized by the reference to what we “should do”, a maxim that presupposes “reason”. He emphasizes that what is, should also be. Bentham expresses himself in a similar ambivalent way as Hume. It is only this ambivalence that opens up a scope for ethical duties and legal recommendations for Bentham. Bentham has developed an ethical duty theory in his posthumously published work Deontology (1834), with which he gives a new name to the duty ethic—based on the Greek word to deon for ‘one must’. It is not a duty theory in the sense of Kant, but a utilitarian prudence ethic that is oriented towards the principle of utility. Under usefulness, Bentham understands the principle by which “profit, advantage, pleasure, good or happiness” is produced for an individual, a group or a community. However, the utility or interests of the community differ only quantitatively and not qualitatively from the interest of the individual. The interest of the community is nothing other than the sum of the interests of the individuals. Since, according to Bentham, every human being is subject to the joys and sorrows of nature, the principle of usefulness corresponding to this fact is also generally valid. But can the correctness of this principle be proven? Bentham’s answer is: No, it is not capable of a “direct proof ”, “because what serves to prove something else cannot be proven itself; a chain of evidence must begin somewhere” (ibid., 58). On the other hand, however, it is also not possible to “refute the correctness of the principle argumentatively” (ibid., 59). However, although the principle of usefulness is effective in all human beings, it does not find general recognition. Bentham names two principles that are opposed to that of usefulness: one is the principle of asceticism, the other that of sympathy and antipathy. The first of the two occurs again in two variants: a religious and a philosophical one. The “religious party”

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forbids its followers any form of pleasure out of “fear of future punishment by a disgruntled and vengeful god” (ibid., 62). The form of religious asceticism has rather made it its “duty […], to seek suffering” (ibid., 63). It was not only about inflicting suffering on themselves, but also on others, “as the holy wars and the religious persecutions testify” (ibid., 64). The philosophical party is “indifferent” to joy. They do not condemn it outright, but only the one they consider to be crude. They refine it and now call it “the honorable, glorious, decent, as the honestum, decorum ” (ibid., 63). Bentham has the Stoics and primarily Cicero in mind. The principle of sympathy and antipathy is not based on consideration, but has “the inner feeling of approval and disapproval” as content. It is the “moral sense” represented by Hutcheson (cf. Ibid., 68). If one follows the followers of this principle, “one only has to ask one’s own feelings for advice” (ibid., 67). Applied to criminal law, this means: “if you have a strong hatred, punish a lot, if you have a little hatred, punish little” (ibid.). Although this principle also coincides with that of utility in many cases, since what causes suffering also causes hatred, it differs from this in that it leaves out considerations of the useful or harmful consequences for society. The feeling is immediate. Finally, Bentham emphasizes that a so-called “theological principle” has no status of its own, since under the premise that only the right can be the will of God, “it is first necessary to know whether a thing is right before one can know whether it corresponds to the will of God” (ibid., 73). Bentham creates a catalog of the “various simple pleasures for which human nature is receptive” (ibid., 83). They are: the pleasures of the senses, the pleasures of wealth, of friendship, of a good reputation, of power, of piety, of benevolence, of malevolence, of memory, of imagination, of expectation, the socially founded pleasures and the pleasures of relaxation. There is also a range of suffering. They are: the sufferings of deprivation, of the senses, of awkwardness, of hostility, of a bad reputation, of piety, of benevolence, of envy, of memory, of imagination, of expectation and the socially founded suffering (cf. ibid., 83). It is the task of the individual, of society and of the legislator to maximize pleasure and minimize suffering. For this it is necessary to quantify both. First, the values of ​​ the different pleasures for an individual have to be quantified and the also quantified values ​​of the suffering have to be deducted from their sum. The same is to be done for all other members of a society in order to calculate a sum of all the pleasures and sufferings present in the society. The balance results from the difference of all pleasures and sufferings. From this a good or a bad “tendency” in the society can be calculated (cf. quotation). Bentham emphasizes that his methods are “as strict as the

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mathematical” (Bentham 2013, 9), which form the basis for all following concepts of a utilitarian ethic. However, he does not give any indications of how the value of a pleasure or a suffering is to be quantified (cf. Höffe 1992, 20). In his book Principles of the Civil Code from 1786 (Principles of Legislation) Bentham discusses the question of whether the principle of utility could also be applied in the areas of politics and law. The consideration that only the principle of utility applies to morality, but the principle of justice applies to politics, shows—according to Bentham—“confused concepts”. “The whole difference between morality and politics is that the former guides the actions of governments, the latter the actions of individuals; but their common goal is well-being. What is politically good cannot be morally bad” (Bentham 1833, 23). Bentham develops the concept of rule utilitarianism when he says: “People are not only bound by the special utility of this or that promise; but in cases where the promise is a nuisance to one of the parties, they are still bound by the general utility of promises, by the trust that every educated person wants to inspire in his word in order to be considered a credible person, and to enjoy the advantages linked to righteousness and respect” (ibid., 25). It is the cleverly calculated utility that leads to the fulfillment of promises and not the “inner voice of conscience” that refers to “God” and, as an argument for the authority of God, in turn, circularly refers to the inner voice of conscience. But in the field of politics, the biggest enemies of the principle of utility are those who refer to the “so-called religious principle” (ibid., 27). These are those who want to make texts of “revelation” the basis of politics. But that would be quite nonsensical, since the prescriptions contained in them often contradict each other and do not form a system. If one were to orient oneself to the “revelation”, this would mean “that, taken literally, it would turn the world upside down, destroy self-defense, industry, trade” (ibid., 28). Moreover, it cannot be denied that “the history of the church provides irrefutable evidence of the terrible evils that have arisen from wrongly understood religious maxims” (ibid.). Non-religious principles, but only the principle of utility is suitable for grounding a modern criminal law. The basis is the “science” of the “calculation of pleasure and displeasure”. That is: “We will have to look at the crime or the evil of certain actions, i.e. the displeasure that results from them for this or that individual; the motive of the criminal, i.e. the incentive of the pleasure that has driven him to crime; the gain of the crime, i.e. the acquisition of some pleasure that has been the consequence thereof; the penalty to

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be imposed by law, i.e. a displeasure that one must subject the guilty party to” (ibid., 37). The legislator must take all these factors into account when drafting a criminal law. If he does, the legislation is nothing other than an “arithmetic operation” (ibid., 44). Bentham admits that this procedure, in contrast to the method of feeling, is initially slow, but after some practice it is reliable and fast. Once you have the “right state of mind, […] you compare the sum of good and evil so quickly that you are not aware of all the links in the chain of thought. You calculate, without knowing it” (ibid., 44). However, new problems arise in the determination of penal provisions within legislation. It is a question of relating the general law to individual cases. Not only the special circumstances of the deed have to be taken into account, but also the country for which these penal provisions are made. Bentham distinguishes four aspects: The first aspect is about assessing the evil caused by a crime. An insult to a woman has a different meaning than to a man; a physical injury to a sick person has a different meaning than to a healthy person. The second concerns the question of the appropriate compensation. So a monetary compensation can be pleasant for one person, for the other it can be offensive, depending “on the rank of the person, their wealth, the prevailing opinion” (ibid., 60). The third concerns the assessment of the effect of the punishment on the offender. Exile has a different meaning for a young person than for an old person, for a family father than for a bachelor, for a craftsman who is dependent on his business, than for a rich person, “who only changes the scene of his pleasures”. The same differences apply to prison sentences. The fourth aspect finally concerns the cultural differences in the various countries. Bentham points out the difference between Europe and Asia in particular. He notes: “The women in Europe are used to enjoying freedom and even domestic rule; the women in Asia are prepared by their education to be locked up in a harem and the slaves of their husbands. Marriage in Europe and the Orient is not the same contract: if one wanted to subject it to the same laws, one would obviously make all interested parties unhappy” (ibid., 61). The result is that there can be no general, equal legislation for all people. The widespread motto: “Equal punishment for equal crimes”—can therefore not be maintained. The equality principle based on natural law only creates an “appearance of justice”. In reality, however, it creates the most enormous inequality under the “appearance of equality” (ibid., 62). Bentham turns against the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen from 1789 and natural law (see Russell 1983, 784). A “natural law” is just as much of a fiction to him as a moral “law of nature”. In his opinion, these expressions “personify” nature, “one attributes this or that intention to

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it” (Bentham 1833, 113). He emphasizes in contrast: “What is natural in humans are their sensations of pleasure or displeasure, their inclinations; but if one calls these sensations and inclinations laws, then one introduces a false and dangerous concept, then one contradicts language with itself. Because precisely these inclinations have to be tamed, laws have to be made. Instead of considering them as laws, one must subject them to laws, and the strictest laws have to be applied against the strongest natural inclinations. If there were a natural law that led all humans to their common good, then laws would be superfluous” (ibid., 114). The law that Bentham accepts is the positive law of the respective legislator. Bentham emphasizes that all laws represent an evil, “for every law restricts freedom” (ibid., 67). Therefore, the legislator only has to choose between different evils. He therefore has to ask himself exactly whether the behavior he punishes is really an evil and whether it is greater than the evil that is threatened by the punishment. The crimes to be fought by the legislator can be divided into evils of the first, second and third order. The evil of the first order is divided into the original, which affects the damaged individual himself, and the derived, which affects the persons associated with him. The evil of the second order is also divided. One is the terror caused by the crime itself. He is associated with the immediate fear of becoming a victim of such a crime himself. The second evil of this order is the danger that this crime paves the way for another crime of this kind (see ibid., 69). But even in the fight against the evils of the first and second order, there can be difficult problems of calculation. Bentham himself chooses the following example: A “poor” man, driven by hunger, “steals a loaf of bread in a rich house that might save his life: can one equate the good he does to himself with the loss suffered by the rich man here?” (ibid., 80). Obviously not. And yet such actions require “punishments” (ibid.). His justification is as follows: “So not because of the evil of the first order, but because of that of the second, these actions are to be declared crimes” (ibid.). This means: The general legal certainty, which is based on the fact that crimes are punished, is higher than the life-saving theft of a human being. Bentham does not explain how the “utility” of a human life is to be quantitatively related to the “utility” of legal certainty (see Höffe 1992, 20). But there is still a third-order evil. It affects the long-term consequences of a spreading crime. So a climate of terror is generated. Bentham describes it as follows: “When terror reaches a certain point, when it lasts a long time, its effect does not remain limited to the suffering capacities of man, it extends to his active capacities, extinguishes them, plunges them into a state of dejection and paralysis. When oppression and robbery become common,

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the cowardly peasant only works to avoid starving to death; he seeks in idleness the only consolation of his misfortune, industry declines with hope, and weeds grow on the most fertile fields” (ibid., 73). But fortunately not only evil spreads, but also good. It shows itself in the third order as “energy, that cheerfulness of heart”, which leads to socially useful action. Bentham is optimistic about its effect. He shares the economic ethic developed by Adam Smith. His thesis is: “Society is so arranged that, in working for our own happiness, we work for the general happiness. One cannot increase one’s own means of enjoyment without increasing those of another. Two peoples, like two individuals, enrich themselves through mutual trade, and every exchange is based on mutual benefit” (ibid., 74). Bentham’s reception history is closely linked to that of utilitarianism: John Stuart Mill builds on him just as much as Peter Singer. Bentham is not only considered a pioneer of the rule of law, democracy and liberalism, but, after some hesitation, also of women’s suffrage. Foucault critically dealt with Bentham’s concept of a surveillance system in prisons. Finally, his, at the time still quite unusual, commitment to animal welfare must not be overlooked.

2 The Principle of Utility (Mill) “Furthermore, the theory of utility is often condemned as immoral in a general sense by labeling it with the term opportunism and thereby making it appear to be in opposition to acting on principle […]. For example, it would be opportunistic to lie in many cases in order to get past a momentary embarrassment or to achieve something that gives us or others an immediate advantage. But insofar as the development and maintenance of a strict truthfulness is one of the most useful and its weakening is one of the most harmful things that our behavior can lead to, and insofar as every, even unintentional, deviation from the truth contributes to shaking the trustworthiness of human statements on which all social well-being that we currently find depends and which is the absolutely essential prerequisite of culture, custom—in short: everything that human happiness in the broadest sense is based on—insofar as we feel that it cannot be useful to violate a rule of such overriding utility for the sake of a short-term advantage, and that whoever, for the sake of an advantage for himself or another, contributes to doing harm to humanity and taking away the good that a more or less mutual trust means, plays the role of their worst enemy.” (John Stuart Mill: Utilitarianism. Stuttgart 1976, 38 f.)

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John Stuart Mill is born in London in 1806. His father James Mill, who represents the utilitarianism of his friend Bentham, educates his son according to these principles from an early age. Mill learns the ancient languages ​​as a child, as well as French and German. At the age of 13 he studies the works of political economy by Adam Smith and David Ricardo with 14 years in Montpellier chemistry, zoology, mathematics, logic and metaphysics. Mental overstrain leads to a deep depression in him. In France he meets representatives of political liberalism and is enthusiastic about the ideals of the French Revolution. Mill develops the concept of a social-liberal state in which he tries to combine the free development of individuality and economic regulation by the state in the field of social security. From 1823 to their nationalization in 1858 he works for the East India Trading Company. In 1851 he married Harriet Taylor, whose fight for women’s rights he supported. From 1865 to 1868 he was a member of the House of Commons for the Whigs. He died in 1873 in Avignon. Important works are his System of Deductive and Inductive Logic from 1843, in which he develops a research logic on an empiricist basis, his book On Liberty from 1859 and Utilitarianism from 1861. Mill develops his utilitarian approach in continuation and modification of the thoughts of Bentham and his father. He undertakes to demonstrate the meaning of the utilitarian principle in present, ethically significant concepts. It is clearly, for example, that already Socrates in his conversation with Protagoras “fought the theory of utilitarianism against the popular morality of this so-called Sophist” (Mill 1976, 3). The utilitarian represents— according to Mill—“the principle of utility or, as Bentham later called it, the principle of the greatest happiness” (ibid., 7). It is a principle that takes the purposes and consequences of an action as a measure. It was Kants mistake to leave this thought out of his ethics. Mill admits that a principle difficulty also affects his approach. It concerns the question of how a proof of this theory can be given. He explains this difficulty as follows: “Of course, this cannot be a proof in the ordinary and popular sense of the word. Questions about final purposes are not capable of direct proof. If it can be shown that something is good, then only by showing that it is a means to something else, the goodness of which is admitted without proof. That the medical art is something good is proved by the fact that it serves health—but how can one prove that health is something good?” (ibid., 8 f.). Something similar applies to the pleasure that music provides; for “how could one prove that pleasure is something good?” (ibid., 9). The fact that man strives for happiness is the unshakeable,

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indemonstrable and unnecessary prerequisite of every ethics. It is also the prerequisite of the “utilitarian or happiness theory”. Mill defines the utilitarian ethic as follows: “The view that utility or the principle of the greatest happiness is the basis of morality says that actions are morally right to the extent that they tend to promote happiness, and morally wrong to the extent that they tend to promote the opposite of happiness. Under ‘happiness’ is meant ‘pleasure’ and the absence of ‘pain’, under ‘unhappiness’ displeasure and the lack of pleasure” (ibid., 13). They are the only things that are desirable as an end in themselves. The objection that this concept means a pure hedonism is rejected by Mill with the argument that there are different types of joy and pleasure. They have a different quality. So the “pleasures of the intellect, the senses and the imagination as well as the moral feelings” are to be assigned a much higher value than the “mere sensuality” (ibid., 15). The proof for this is the “majority vote” (ibid., 20). Mill argues as follows: “of two pleasures, the one that is preferred by all or almost all of those who have experienced both— regardless of the feeling that one of them has to be preferred for moral reasons—is decidedly preferred” (ibid., 15 f.). Mill replaces the model of a quantification of happiness by Bentham with the idea of qualitative difference. This leads him to the judgment: “It is better to be an unhappy person than a satisfied pig; better an unhappy Socrates than a satisfied fool” (ibid., 18). But Mill is not satisfied with this understanding of utilitarianism. It is not enough to point out that all people actually strive for happiness, they should also. He understands his approach as a normative ethics. From being follows an ought. He says: “Since happiness is, according to the utilitarian view, the ultimate goal of human action, it is necessarily also the norm of morality. This can therefore be defined as the totality of the rules of action and the regulations according to which a life of the indicated type is achievable for the entire human race to the greatest possible extent; and not only for them, but, as far as the circumstances permit, for the entire sentient nature” (ibid., 21). However, the gap between being and ought is all the smaller, the stronger it is bridged by the existing “emotional bond—be it to the community or to individual people” (ibid., 24). Mill combines utilitarianism with a social utopia, to which the eradication of the “really great evils in the world” such as poverty, illness, lack of education and disasters of all kinds belong: “In short, all the important causes of human suffering can be eliminated to a considerable extent—and many almost completely—by human toil and effort. And although […] a

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long series of generations must fall in battle before the battle is won and this world becomes what it can be made with right knowledge and will, anyone who is insightful and magnanimous enough to take on even a small and insignificant part of the task will experience this battle as a noble satisfaction that he is not willing to give up for the sake of any self-seeking pleasure” (ibid., 27). The present human race is still far from this goal. A life without happiness is “everyday reality” for “nineteen twentieth of humanity”. Every person should take into account the “overall interest” of humanity, but in doing so they need not sacrifice themselves, but only try to bring their own interests into “as much agreement with the interest of the whole” as possible (ibid., 30). They should view their own interests and those of everyone else from the perspective of strict impartiality and act accordingly. But this thought is not new. “In the Golden Rule, which Jesus of Nazareth put forward, we find the spirit of utilitarianism expressed perfectly. The demands to treat others as one would like them to treat oneself, and to love one’s neighbor as oneself, represent utilitarian morality in its highest perfection.” (ibid.) The usefulness of an action is measured by its success. The motive plays no role. If someone saves a drowning person, it is irrelevant whether they did so out of a “sense of duty” or in the hope of a reward (cf. ibid., 32). But how can the success of an action be properly judged, and how can unintended consequences be avoided? These questions are legitimate, but they do not constitute a fundamental objection to the concept of a consequentialist ethic, because on the one hand the acting person has the traditional knowledge of the entire “human species” available to them, which tells them that theft, murder and lies are bad, and on the other hand it is better to orient oneself according to the principle of that which is recognized as useful, than to act without any norm at all. The same applies to the recurring cases of duty collisions (cf. ibid., 44). If, according to utilitarian ethics, it is a moral duty to promote the general welfare, then the question of possible sanctions for its violation also arises. There are two types of them: external and internal. The external motive to fulfill one’s moral duty arises from “the hope of favor and the fear of disfavor from our fellow human beings” and, for a religious person, in addition from “love and reverence for God” (ibid., 48). The internal sanction occurs in the form of conscience. This is a “more or less strong feeling of displeasure that makes itself felt as soon as we act contrary to our duty” (ibid., 49). Psychologically considered, conscience is a complicated “phenomenon”. It is accompanied by ideas “which arise from sympathy, affection and even more

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from fear, from all forms of religious feeling, from the memory of childhood and our whole past life, from self-respect, from the need to be respected by others and occasionally from self-abasement.” (ibid., 49). Is conscience innate, as the intuitionists maintain, or is it acquired? Mill assumes that it is acquired, but nevertheless belongs to human nature. It is just as natural for man to “speak, think, build cities, cultivate the land, although these are acquired skills” (ibid., 53). The utilitarian moral has its foundation in this natural feeling. He explains his thought as follows: “This unshakeable foundation are the community feelings of people—the desire for unity with our fellow creatures, which is already a powerful driving force in human nature and, fortunately, belongs to those which, even without being expressly inculcated in man, become stronger under the influence of progressive culture” (ibid., 54). An expression of this community feeling is that the attempt has been made time and again to realize a “society of equals” in which “the individual has a stronger self-interest in taking the welfare of others into account in his way of life” (ibid., 56). Mill refers to Auguste Comte when he points out that this community feeling can be realized “even without the support of a belief in God”. Rather, a state is conceivable in which this feeling, supported by institutions and education, would be “taught like a religion” (ibid., 57). But if utilitarian morality were to fundamentally determine the structure of society, the question would arise as to whether the law would also submit to this principle. First, Mill concedes that there is just as much dispute about what is just as there is about what is useful for society. But since justice also has the general interests of society as its goal, it is evident to him that “justice, which is based on utility, makes up the most important and binding part of all morality” (ibid., 103). Mill does not see any contradiction in this question to thinkers like Kant, who, with regard to questions of justice, have the individual case in view and not the “entire society”, because “Kant’s principle only makes sense if it is understood to mean that we should orient our behaviour according to a rule which all reasonable beings can accept for the benefit of their overall interests ” (ibid., 91). Of central, legally relevant importance is the interest in security. It is “in everyone’s eyes the most essential of all interests. […] This, after the need for food, indispensable of all basic needs can only be satisfied if the mechanism by which security is granted, without interruption, remains in function” (ibid., 94). For this reason, it is the most important task of the state to fulfill this function. He does it by punishing anyone who endangers the security of society. The punishment is an expression of a “sense of justice”, in which

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“not only a reasonable, but also an instinctive element enters, the instinct of revenge” (ibid.). Although there are also other motives for punishment, such as the “welfare of the punished” or the protection of the public. Other thinkers—including Robert Owen—generally consider punishments to be unfair because the offender is the victim of education and environment and therefore cannot be held responsible for his actions. But all these considerations have a subordinate position compared to the principle of revenge. Mill notes that although the principle of “eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth” no longer plays a role in Europe, it can be assumed that “most people secretly yearn for it” (ibid., 99). Mill is aware that the principle of revenge in criminal law differs from that of utility. Remarkably, it is, in his opinion, not below but above it. Therefore, Mill comes to the astonishing statement: “The principle of giving everyone what he deserves, i.e. rewarding good with good and evil with evil, is therefore not only contained in the concept of justice, as we have determined it, but is also the subject of that peculiar intense feeling that justice in the appreciation of man over the mere utility represents” (ibid., 106). However, Mill makes an exception to this principle in one case. In contrast to his general prohibition of lying, which also includes the prohibition of lying to the advantage of another (cf. quotation), he emphasizes: “To save someone’s life, it is not only permissible, but even obligatory, under certain circumstances, to steal the necessary food or medicine or to take possession of it by force or to kidnap the only doctor who could help and force him to render assistance” (ibid., 110). But not only in criminal law, in civil law too the principle of justice, which emphasizes the principle of equality, must give way to the principle of utility in many cases. Thus, in the case of the payment of differently productive work performances, social utility decides. Something similar applies to the question of taxes. Here a “progressive taxation” is appropriate, since an equal tax burden for poor and rich “conflicts too much with humanity and social welfare” (ibid., 102). Despite all the weighing of both principles in detail, Mill is sure: “Only utilitarianism can help us out of this confusion” (ibid.). However, his examples make it clear that not only a contradiction between the principle of justice and the principle of utility results from his approach, but also another one between an act utilitarianism and a rule utilitarianism (cf. Höffe 1992, 44 ). In his much-read book On Liberty from the year 1859, which contains his political ethics, Mill does not discuss the problem of free will, but develops the program of a politically relevant freedom of action. Mill outlines

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this “proper region of human freedom” by emphasizing three aspects: “First, it includes the inner sphere of consciousness, demanding freedom of conscience in the broadest sense, freedom of thought and feeling, absolute freedom of opinion and sensation with regard to all practical or speculative, scientific, moral or theological objects. […]. The principle requires, secondly, freedom of inclination and occupation, the freedom to give our life a frame in accordance with our own character, the freedom to act as we please, […] without hindrance from our fellow human beings, as long as our action does not harm them […]. Thirdly, from this freedom of each individual follows the freedom, within the same limits, of the association of individuals; the freedom to join together for any purpose which does not involve the injury of others” (Mill 1987, 19). The right of the individual to express his opinion, to which freedom of the press also belongs, is—according to Mill—a achievement of modern times that is no longer questioned in principle by the governments. Nevertheless, it is occasionally departed from, for example “when the fear of riots makes ministers and judges lose their composure” (ibid., 23), or when it is a minority opinion and the government agrees with the majority of the people in the suppression of this opinion and thus exercises a “tyranny of the majority” (ibid., 10). Any authority that suppresses an opinion does so with the argument that it is wrong. By doing so, it declares itself to be “infallible” (ibid., 25). The one who suppresses opinions is subject to a double fallacy: He not only wrongly assumes that he is infallible, but he also fails to realize that even the expression of false opinions is essential for the process of finding truth (cf. ibid., 31). The fallibility, but also the “correctability of his errors” make man a moral being. “He is capable of correcting his errors through discussion and experience. Not only by experience, discussion must be there to show how experience is to be interpreted” (ibid., 28). The transition from the geocentric to the heliocentric world view was only possible through discussion and a new interpretation of the apparently confirmed opinions by experience (cf. ibid., 46). The suppression of freedom of expression in the field of religion has a special meaning. Mill reports of two people to whom a court in London denied the protection of the laws, “because they honestly declared that they had no religious belief ” (ibid., 39). The consequence was: They could now be “robbed or mistreated” with impunity. An appeal to Christianity could have saved them. But this religion is highly problematic itself. The Christian morality is—according to Mill—historically seen, a negative reaction to the ancient ethics. “In its abhorrence of sensuality, it made asceticism an idol

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[…]. It offers the hope of heaven and the threat of hell as the prescribed and appropriate motives for a virtuous life and thus falls far short of the best of the ancients; […] It is essentially a doctrine of passive obedience; it sharpens submission to all established authorities […]. The minimum recognition of the obligation to the public good contained in modern morality comes from Greek and Roman sources, not Christian” (ibid., 61). The pressure that this morality exerts on a “number of promising intelligences” is fatal. Many of them do not dare to “follow any bold, vigorous, independent line of thought, for fear that it would lead them to something that is considered irreligious or immoral” (ibid., 43). Mill sees the formation of a state in which the free development of the individuality of its citizens is guaranteed as the goal of his political ethics. Even a “contract by which a person sells himself as a slave” is therefore null and void (ibid., 123). He bases his understanding of the liberal state on Wilhelm von Humboldt (cf. ibid., 70). But the idea of the freedom of the individual contradicts the spirit of the times. He says: “Today, however, society has outrun individuality; and the danger threatening human nature is not the excess, but the lack of personal impulses and preferences” (ibid., 74). But precisely these impulses are important. They benefit the individual as well as society. This means: “In the measure of the development of his individuality, every human being becomes more valuable to himself and can therefore be more valuable to others” (ibid., 76). The position of women, whose freedom and individuality are still severely restricted, deserves special attention. Mill notes: “The almost despotic power of husbands over their wives does not need to be dealt with in detail here, because nothing is more necessary for the complete elimination of this evil than that women have the same rights and enjoy the protection of the law in the same way as all other human beings” (ibid., 126). It is also of no less importance to promote the development of children. It is one of the “most sacred duties of parents […], after they have brought a human being into the world, to give this being an education that makes it capable of fulfilling its duty in life towards others and towards itself ” (ibid.). If this is not done voluntarily, it is “almost an axiom that the state should require and enforce the education of every human being to a certain degree, who is born as its citizen” (ibid.). Mill’s reception history is considerable. His System of Logic provided impulses for the development of the humanities. His ethics helped to make utilitarianism worldwide. His book On Liberty is also considered a classic of political liberalism.

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3 Cost-Benefit Analysis as a Calculus of Happiness (Singer) “A woman can plan to have two children. If one dies while she is of childbearing age, she can give birth to another in its place. Suppose a woman who has planned to have two children has a normal child and then gives birth to a hemophiliac. The burden that this child represents is likely to make the third child inevitable; but if the disabled child were to die, she would have another child. It is also plausible to assume that the prospects for a happy life for a normal child would be better than for a hemophiliac. If the death of a disabled infant leads to the birth of another infant with better prospects for a happy life, then the total amount of happiness is greater if the disabled infant is killed. The loss of a happy life for the first infant is offset by the gain of a happier life for the second. Therefore, if the killing of the hemophiliac infant has no adverse effect on others, then, according to the total view, it would be right to kill him.” (Peter Singer: Praktische Ethik (Practical Ethics). Stuttgart 1994, 237 f.) Peter Singer was born in Melbourne in 1946. His parents are from Austria. They emigrated to Australia from Nazi Germany because of their Jewish heritage. He lost three of his grandparents in the Holocaust. Singer has taught at Oxford and New York University, among other places, and was Professor of Philosophy at Monash University in Melbourne from 1977 to 1999. In 1999, he was appointed DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University. He is also Laureate Professor at the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies in Melbourne. Important works include: Animal Liberation (1975), Practical ethics (1979) and Should the baby live? (1985). In his ethics, Singer follows both the views of Bentham and those of Mill. He rejects any relativism and subjectivism, but advocates universal, generally valid claim of ethics. In his opinion, this is convincingly, if not by a “final justification”, fulfilled by the “utilitarian position” (Singer 1994, 29). How little a final justification is possible is also shown by the fact that even in fundamental questions utilitarians come to different judgments, for example in the problem of lying. The question of a general ban on lying is already answered very differently by Bentham and Mill. Singer does not answer the question of the emergency lie as Mill does, but as a utilitarian action as follows: “It may normally be wrong and false to lie, but if one were living in Nazi Germany and the Gestapo appeared at the door to search for Jews, it

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would surely be right to deny the existence of the Jewish family hiding on the attic” (ibid.,17). Singer chooses the concept of interest as the central concept of his ethics. This position requires that the morally acting person is not only able to take into account his own interests, but also the interests of others. Singer explains this thought as follows: “This requires me to weigh all these interests and choose that course of action that is most likely to satisfy the interests of those affected to the greatest extent. So I must […] choose the course of action that has the best consequences for all those affected on balance” (ibid., 30). Unless Bentham and Mill did not take into account not only momentary pleasure and displeasure, but also further wishes, utilitarianism, which is oriented towards interest, would agree with classical utilitarianism (cf. ibid., 31). It is noteworthy that Singer nevertheless points to a problem of this approach. He chooses as a historical example a society of collectors and hunters. Egoists could, for example, “stop collecting fruits when they know they will get enough from their share of what others are collecting” (ibid., 30). The calculation of the “most likely” course of action is therefore not enough to qualify an action as moral. Necessary for this is the recognition “that my own interests do not simply count more than the interests of others because they are my own” (ibid., 30). Only the willingness to take into account the idea of universalization and to accept it as a normative aspect enables the utilitarianism understood in this way to compete with other ethical “ideals” such as “the theory of rights, justice, the sanctity of life, etc.”. The principle of universalization requires that the interests of all people count equally. Singer emphasizes: “The essence of the principle of equal consideration of interests lies in the fact that we give equal weight to the similar interests of all those affected by our actions in our moral deliberations. […] Interest is interest, whose interest it may be” (ibid., 39). But in practice, this can lead to quite unequal actions, with due consideration of the interests of all those involved. Singer emphasizes: “Equal interest balancing is a minimal principle of equality in the sense that it does not dictate equal treatment” (ibid., 42). He gives several examples for this. In the first case it is about assistance after a disaster. He says: “After an earthquake, we might give priority to the pain relief of a doctor so that she can treat other victims. But the pain itself that the doctor has only counts once without additional weight. The principle of equal interest balancing works like a balance: interests are weighed impartially” (ibid., 40). The second example concerns the promotion of the gifted. This means in this case: “Interest

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balancing with regard to mathematically gifted children may prompt us to teach them higher mathematics at a young age, which would be completely pointless or even damaging for other children” (ibid., 41). The unequal treatment with equal interest balancing results from the fact that equal actions can have very different consequences. This assessment of consequences is to be considered in the interest balancing. So it can be morally right to give two morphine injections to a very seriously injured person and none at all to a slightly injured person. The “non-egalitarian” action leads to a situation that is “more egalitarian” in the result. With the unequal administration of the painkillers, “we make sure that both people have slight pain” (ibid., 43). This morally justified unequal treatment with equal interest balancing follows the principle of marginal utility known from economics. Singer chooses the following example for explanation: “If I am struggling to survive on 200 g of rice per day and I am given 50 g more per day, my situation will be significantly improved; but if I already have a kilo of rice per day, the additional 50 g would not interest me at all” (ibid.). The goal of equal interest balancing is the utilitarian principle of increasing the total utility of all those affected. Singer also closely follows Bentham and Mill’s position in another area. This is the area of animal welfare. Animals, according to Singer, must be included in the weighing of interests, because “the fact that certain beings do not belong to our species does not entitle us to exploit them, and likewise the fact that other living beings are less intelligent than us does not mean that their interests may be disregarded” (ibid., 83). Here, Singer already points out the two decisive “prejudices” which, in his opinion, lead to humans and their interests being valued more highly than those of animals. One is based on the principle of species and the other on the superior mental abilities of humans compared to animals. Singer explicitly refers to Bentham in his deliberations, who has already rejected both criteria as inadequate. After Bentham has made it clear that “the number of legs” or “the hairiness” cannot be an argument to “deliver a living being helplessly to the whim of a tormentor”, he asks: “What else is it that should draw an insurmountable line here? Is it the ability to think, or perhaps the ability to speak? But a fully grown horse or dog is an incomparably more reasonable and communicative creature than a child who is only one day, one week or even one month old. But even if they were different, what would it matter? The question is not: can they think? or: can they speak?, but can they suffer? ” (ibid., 84). Singer completely agrees with this argumentation (cf. Singer 2015, 48). The ability to suffer becomes the decisive criterion in

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the weighing of interests. This excludes inorganic bodies and plants, but “a mouse, on the other hand, has an interest in not being tortured, because it suffers while doing so” (Singer 1994, 85). The idea that humans have a higher status than animals is called “speciesism” by Singer. He sums up his plea for animal protection as follows: “Human speciesists do not acknowledge that the pain experienced by pigs or mice is just as bad as the pain experienced by humans. / This is really the whole argument for extending the principle of equality to non-human animals” (ibid., 86). Taking this argument into account, two consequences arise. The first is that the consumption of animals that are exposed to considerable suffering in today’s factory farming is morally not defensible, especially since humans can nourish themselves healthily without any loss. The second consequence concerns animal experiments. The experiments for the production of cosmetics are superfluous and should be avoided altogether. The medically justified ones remain. Here is his answer: “If one animal or even a dozen animals had to undergo experiments to save thousands, I would consider it right in view of the same interests to let them suffer. This is at least the answer that a utilitarian must give” (ibid., 96). But Singer is not satisfied with his own answer. He asks himself, however, whether this decision is not itself based on an unacknowledged “speciesism”, because they are animals that are sacrificed for humans. The suspicion would only be refuted if “the same researchers” were “willing to carry out their experiments on orphaned humans with serious, incurable brain damage if this were the only way to save thousands of (ibid.,97). In many cases, the test animals do not survive the experiments. This leads to the question of the justification of killing living beings at all. The representatives of the “sanctity of life” deny this. However, most supporters of this formula actually only apply it to human life (cf. ibid., 116). However, since the distinction between human life and non-human life is exposed to the charge of “speciesism”, the question arises as to what distinguishes human life from non-human life. Singer pleads for distinguishing between two meanings of the term human. According to the one, the human being is “a member of the species Homo sapiens” and according to the other “a person”. The first allows a clear biological assignment, the second requires its own definition. Singer adopts the one from the “Oxford Dictionary”. According to it, a person is “a self-conscious or rational being” (ibid., 120). If one looks at the history of “Western civilization”, it can be seen that the right to life was originally by no means self-evident for every human being in its mere biological meaning. Neither slaves nor infants had an “automatic right to life. The Greeks and Romans killed deformed or weak infants by

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exposing them in mountainous regions” (ibid., 121). Lycurgus and Solon, Plato and Aristotle were just as agreed as Roman law. “In that era, it was considered better to end a life that had begun under unfavorable conditions than to prolong such a life with all its problems” (ibid., 122). The decisive turning point in this attitude came with the spread of Christianity in the Roman Empire. It included “the belief that all human beings born of human parents were immortal and predestined for eternal bliss or everlasting torment. With this belief, the killing of a Homo sapiens became a terrible consequence because it thus delivered a being to its eternal fate” (ibid.). In addition, one understood every human life as the property of God and the killing therefore as a sin against him. Even if the religious background of this attitude has since faded, the corresponding moral conviction “of the uniqueness and special privileges of our species” is deeply anchored in our consciousness. If these “privileges” are called into question, the question of the right to life is also raised anew. To answer this question, it makes sense to look at the meaning of the human being as a person, i.e. as a self-conscious being. “A self-conscious being is aware of itself as a distinct entity, with a past and future. […] A being that is aware of itself in this way is capable of having wishes with regard to its own future” (ibid., 123). As a future-oriented being, the person has preferences. If the utilitarian takes these into account and not just the momentary happiness, as in classical utilitarianism, but also the preferences, this leads to a preference utilitarianism. This definition also has consequences for the question of whether it is right or wrong to kill a human being. If one takes the life of a person, “one thus frustrates his wishes for the future” (ibid.) and i.e. his preferences. But according to Singer, this does not yet mean a general ban on killing people; because not all people are persons. Singer uses his definition of the person as an opportunity for the following provocative thesis: “If one kills a snail or a 24-h-old infant, one does not thwart wishes of this kind because snails and newborns are unable to have such wishes” (ibid.). Singers thesis is that there are people who are not people, such as infants, while on the other hand some animals have this predicate, primarily the apes. He reports of primatologists who have been able to teach chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans the sign language of the deaf and to communicate with them in a way that, in his opinion, proves that they have self-consciousness and are therefore to be considered as persons. But Singer goes even further. He expands the concept of person and is of the opinion that it may also be applicable to humpback whales and dolphins (cf. ibid., 151) and even to dogs and cats (cf. ibid., 158). These considerations have

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consequences for the question of the right to kill living beings. Singer states: “Some non-human animals seem to be rational and self-conscious and understand themselves as distinct beings with a past and future” (ibid., 173). Singer excludes the right to kill living beings that have these properties. For all other living beings there is a right to kill them painlessly. Here the argument applies, that a living being can be replaced by another (cf. ibid., 174). These considerations also have consequences for the assessment of abortion and infanticide. Singer argues that “the life of a fetus (and of course an embryo) is not worth more than the life of a non-human animal at a similar level of rationality, self-consciousness, awareness, ability to feel, etc., and that because a fetus is not a person, a fetus does not have the same claim to life as a person” (ibid., 219). With regard to infanticide he follows the opinion of the Greek and Roman antiquity. He emphasizes that an ancient writer like Seneca, who also held this opinion, appears “superior to us in his moral sense compared to early and medieval Christian writers” (ibid., 223). Singer discusses three cases in which he considers an infanticide to be justified: Firstly, there is a malformation of the spine known as “spina bifida” (cf. Kuhse/Singer 1993, 75). “In the more severe cases, the child remains permanently paralyzed from the hip down and never gains control over the bowel or bladder. Often, an excess of fluid accumulates in the brain, a condition known as hydrocephalus, which can lead to mental retardation” (Singer 1994, 235). The second case is hemophilia (see quote). The blood of a hemophiliac lacks the normal clotting factor, “and therefore, the slightest injury threatens him with prolonged bleeding, especially internal bleeding. If the bleeding cannot be stopped, it leads to a permanent paralysis that eventually leads to death” (ibid., 236 f.). The third case concerns infants with Down-Syndrome. “Such children are mentally retarded, and most will never be able to live independently, but their lives can be quite pleasant, just like those of small children” (ibid., 239). Singer justifies a right to infanticide in these examples with the following argument: In the aforementioned cases, abortion would be completely legal in most countries, while the killing of newborn infants would not be (cf. ibid., 241). He considers the moment of birth to be an arbitrary criterion for the legality of killing human life. He associates his consideration with the following proposal for a legal infanticide: “If disabled newborns were not considered beings with a right to life until about a week or a month after birth, then parents would be able to make their decision together with the doctor and on a much broader knowledge base regarding the child’s health than is possible before birth” (ibid., 243).

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Finally, Singer emphasizes that letting people die a painful death is no more moral than killing them. But this is exactly what has been happening since the end of colonialism, when rich nations of the world let poor nations suffer. The UN’s modest goal of 0.7% of gross national product for development aid is only met by a few countries. “According to the most conservative estimates, 400 million people lack the calories, proteins, vitamins and minerals necessary for a physically and mentally healthy life. […] In some areas, it is expected that half of all children will die before their fifth birthday” (ibid., 278). Singer sees it as a moral obligation of every person to help: “If we can prevent something bad from happening without sacrificing anything of comparable moral significance, we should do it” (ibid., 294). This premise is fulfilled for members of the wealthy nations. A change in diet from meat to grains could make a decisive difference. “If we stopped feeding grain and soybeans to animals, the amount of food saved would be more than enough to end hunger everywhere in the world if it were distributed to those who need it” (ibid., 281). To the objection that this help would contribute to further overpopulation, Singer replies with the argument that wherever living standards and education spread together with contraception, population growth decreases. Singer’s effect is ambivalent. On the one hand, he has given important impulses to the worldwide animal protection movement. On the other hand, his statements about the legalization of infanticide under certain conditions have led to heated controversy. He thus takes a clear stand against the Declaration of Human Rights (Article 3) from 1948.

VI Value Ethics

The value-based ethic makes the concept of value the basis of its own concept of ethics. It finds its starting points in ancient philosophy. Thus, in Stoic philosophy, the thesis is put forward that “natural things” have a “value”, while “unnatural” things have an “unvalue” (cf. HWP 12, 556). The Greek word for value is axios, a word that has a wide range of meanings, namely: 1) uplifting, equal, 2) worthy, valuable, precious, stately, befitting, appropriate, right, and 3) cheap, inexpensive, cheap. Two broad variants of meaning can be distinguished: one contains an economic dimension, the other an ethical. It is noteworthy that Kant, who does not represent a value-based ethic, nevertheless uses the term value in the context of his ethic. In his Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals from 1785, he repeatedly emphasizes that an action whose motive is not inclination but duty has a “true moral value” (Kant IV, 24 ff.). But Kant does not only apply the term value to actions, but also to persons. He says: “But that one man’s existence in itself has a value, which merely lives […], to enjoy […], reason will never be able to convince itself. Only by what he does, without regard to enjoyment, in full freedom and independence from what nature could sufferingly provide him, does he give his existence as the existence of a person an absolute value” (Kant V, 285). The most important differentiation for the value-based ethic is carried out by Kant when he distinguishes between the economic and the ethical dimension of value. He emphasizes: All goods that can be replaced by others have a “price”, i.e. a “relative value”. Only what is purpose

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in itself, i.e. “morality and humanity”, have “dignity”, i.e. an “inner value” (Kant IV, 68). In accordance with this differentiation of Kant, the term value developed in two different historical tracks. As an economic category, it played a decisive role in the attempt to determine a fair price. In addition to the invested work, a wealth of other factors are involved in the calculation. However, since Max Weber already expressed doubts about the meaningfulness of the term value in the context of national economics, “the term W(ert) (W(orth)) is now completely dispensed with in economics” (HWP 12, 590). This is also how it went with the ethical concept of value. Hermann Lotze (1817–1881) is considered the founder of value philosophy (cf. Schnädelbach 1983, 206). Starting in 1908, this was also referred to in Germany as axiology, based on the Greek term axios, (cf. HWP 12, 612). In the tradition of neo-Kantianism, Wilhelm Windelband called for a “philosophical axiology” in which the objects of philosophical research are always examined in relation to a “valuing consciousness” (cf. ibid.). John Dewey, who belongs to American pragmatism, places the concept of value in the context of life-philosophical considerations. For him, life itself is the “highest value”. The concept plays a central role in his “pedagogical philosophy”, which attaches great importance to value education. Scheler opposes the “formalism” in Kant’s Ethics. In his “material value ethics”, “value feeling”, which he interprets as a form of value knowledge following Pascal, plays an important role. It is based on the concepts of “love and hate”. Nicolai Hartmann combines his value ethics with a “new ontology”, which he develops based on Aristotle using the model of levels of being. The person representing the highest level of being—“spiritual being”—has the task of “implementing the ideal values in reality”.

1 Life Itself—The Highest Value (Dewey) “To value originally meant to value positively, to appreciate highly; in the second place it acquires the meaning of estimating, judging in general; i.e. it means the fact that something is dear and precious to us, but also the evaluation of an object, its nature and its value in general in comparison to something else. Valuing in the last sense therefore means comparatively valuing, deriving value for some purpose or intention. This distinction coincides with that between ‘values in themselves’ and ‘mediate values’ which is sometimes

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made. Values in themselves are not subject to comparative evaluation; they cannot appear as greater or smaller, better or worse than others. They are ‘invaluable’, and if something is ‘invaluable’, then it is neither more nor less ‘invaluable’ than other invaluable things. […]. From these explanations certain conclusions arise for pedagogical values. […]. Since education is not a means in the service of life, but rather represents the course of a fruitful and significant life in itself, the only ‘highest value’ that can be given is the process of life itself.” (John Dewey: Democracy and Education. An Introduction to Philosophical Pedagogy. Weinheim/Basel 1993, 314 ff.). John Dewey is born in 1859 in Burlington, Vermont. His ancestors emigrated from Flanders under the name ‘de Wei’ (‘from the meadow’). Dewey studied at the University of Vermont before being awarded a doctorate in psychology from John Hopkins University in 1884. He taught philosophy at the universities of Michigan and Minnesota from 1884–1894. In 1894 he received a call from the University of Chicago, a city that was a center of industrial development but also of social revolts. This social situation forms the background for the philosophy of pragmatism. The ‘Department of Education’ led by Dewey plays a leading role in it. With the financial support of a group of parents, he founded a ‘Laboratory School’ where his concept of pragmatic pedagogy is tested. From 1904 until his retirement in 1930, he taught as a professor of philosophy at ‘Columbia University’ in New York. In 1916 his pedagogical main work Democracy and Education appears. In the years 1918–1928 he undertakes lecture tours to Japan, China, Turkey, Mexico and Russia, where his pedagogy in particular meets with great interest. Dewey dies in 1952 in New York (see Suhr 1994). Pragmatism is often referred to as “the first truly American philosophy” (ibid., 13). However, Dewey develops his concept against the background of intensive engagement with European philosophy and pedagogy. In the field of philosophy, Plato and Aristotle play just as important a role as Descartes, Locke, Kant and Hegel; in pedagogy, it is Rousseau, Pestalozzi, Fröbel and Montessori. In addition, however, his thinking undergoes that turning point which, in relation to European philosophy, has been characterized as the collapse of idealism. It begins with Hegel’s death in 1831 and determines the further thinking of the nineteenth century. In the words of Nietzsche, who himself was a leading representative of this turning point, it is a matter of the “revaluation of all values”. Leading ideas and concepts are abandoned and turned into their opposite. In the place of the idea, reality comes; in

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place of reason, life; in place of theory, practice; in place of an abstract universality, the concrete individual; and finally, in place of empty speculation, verifiable experience. Dewey carried out all of these inversions. He too has become—like Kierkegaard and Marx before him—a follower of Hegel (cf. Dewey 2004, 18 ff.) to a Hegel critic (ibid., 21). For him, as for Nietzsche and Dilthey, life becomes the central concept of his anthropology (ibid., 25). As for Marx, man realizes himself primarily through his social practice and is at the same time, like Kierkegaard, an unmistakable individual. Finally, for him, as for Nietzsche, usefulness for life decides the truth value of a statement. Nonetheless, his thinking differs from radical European Hegel critics in that it avoids mere antithesis. He remains true to Hegel’s thinking by always seeking to mediate the seemingly mutually exclusive opposites. Dewey decidedly rejects any form of dualism (Dewey 2011, 94). This becomes clear, for example, with the pair of opposites ‘reason—life’. While Nietzsche and Dilthey emphasize the irrationality of life and say that life must not be brought before the “judgment seat of reason” (Dilthey 1968, 261), for Dewey this opposition does not exist. Although his concept can also be referred to as a life philosophy (cf. Martens 1975, 48), reason does not form an opposition to life, but is itself an organic part of it. The autonomy of reason is given up and can be given up, because it fulfills a servile function in it. Life is determined by growth, but in order to grow, it needs reason. Reason is an instrument of life. Dewey calls his philosophy “pragmatic” (Dewey 2011, 440), “experimentalism” (Dewey 2004, 13) and “instrumentalism” (ibid., 24). The decisive factor is that reason fulfills a mediating function within the life process. Kant’s distinction between “practical” and “pragmatic” plays an important role for the concept of “pragmatic”. “Practical” is for Kant “everything that is possible through freedom”. Here the “pure laws” of practical reason apply, which are “completely a priori determined”. In contrast, he says: “If the conditions of the exercise of our free will are empirical, then reason can have no other than regulative use in it, […] which can provide no other than pragmatic laws of free behavior for the sake of the goals recommended to us by the senses […] (Kant 1998 II, 673).” It is precisely the emphasis on the empirical conditions of ‘free behavior’ that characterizes Dewey’s pragmatism. Life is the central theme of Dewey’s anthropology and also of his ethics, which is to be understood as an ethics of value. In it, life itself represents the highest value. All practice, political as well as pedagogical, is oriented towards it. Life, more precisely the ‘life process’, is therefore the highest value because it has no goal outside of itself.

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For Dewey, this thought becomes the guiding principle of his pedagogy. Education is not, for him, a philosophical topic alongside others, but rather contains the core of his understanding of philosophy. Dewey emphasizes: “Philosophy is the theory of education in its most general form” (Dewey 2011, 426). Following Plato, philosophy for Dewey is the lifelong process of acquiring knowledge that leads to action-guiding insights. His book Democracy and Education is therefore not only his main work in pedagogy, but also his philosophical work. The way children learn can show how people can shape their lives in a learning way. This insight has repercussions on the understanding of education. Contrary to pedagogical theories of his time, which develop methods to enable children and adolescents to make the transition to adulthood as smoothly as possible, he emphasizes: Education is not just a means to an end, but “itself the course of a fruitful and significant life.” It is “the only ‘highest value’ that can be indicated” (see quotation). It is therefore consistent when Dewey begins his educational philosophy with the thematization of life itself. The starting point is the distinction between animate and inanimate beings. For example, a stone “breaks down into smaller pieces”, but a living being is different: “A living being can easily be destroyed by superior force; nevertheless, it tries to use the forces that act on it for its own further existence” (Dewey 2011, 15). If it cannot do this, it does not “break down”, but “loses its identity as a living being”. These considerations lead him to the following central statement of his pedagogical philosophy: “A living being is a being that controls, overcomes and uses for its own continued activity the forces that would otherwise consume it. Life is a process of self-renewal through interaction with the environment” (ibid.). With this statement, Dewey not only characterizes life, but also learning, which is the center of human life activity. Learning is the active interaction with the environment with the goal of a constant “self-renewal” (cf. Copleston 1994, 373). For child learning this means: “The child has the advantage of a number of instinctive tendencies to experimental reaction and the numerous experiences it makes while doing so […]. By learning an action instead of finding it ready-made, it necessarily learns to vary its factors and to combine them in different ways, depending on the different circumstances. The fact that methods are developed during the learning of an action which can be used in other situations opens up the possibility of continuous progress. Even more important is the fact that the human being acquires the habit of learning: it learns to learn” (Dewey 2011, 69). The child learns about the world and itself primarily not by taking on theoretical knowledge, not

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by a scholastic method of memorization, but by actions. The acquisition of knowledge takes place as a “learning by doing”. Dewey explains his pedagogical principle using the following example: “The boy who makes a kite fly has to keep an eye on it, has to pay attention to the changing strength of the pull the string exerts on his hand. His senses are ways to knowledge not because through them any external facts are brought to the mind, but because they are used while performing a purposeful activity. The properties of the seen and heard things are significant for what is being done and are therefore perceived with keen attention; they are meaningful” (ibid., 190). The example is instructive in two ways: On the one hand, it shows the priority of practice over theory, of experience over speculation. On the other hand, it just as clearly shows Dewey’s approach of thinking in terms of mediation. The senses, the handling of things are not an end in themselves. They are not detached from “mind”, “sense” and “meaning”. On the contrary, they make these areas accessible in a purposeful way. The boy who makes a kite fly recognizes aerodynamic relationships in a way that is comprehensible to him. He learns about these relationships in a different, i.e. more meaningful and more purposeful, way than would be possible with a textbook. The experiences have a practical value for him. Actions are “ways to knowledge” based on experience. However, the example also has a pedagogical value. The activity has not been presented to him as a didactically motivated task, but is the result of his own decision. It is a fulfilled present and at the same time a meaningful preparation for future skills that will be necessary. A special importance is attached to the mediation of social values. But this can only be done in a pedagogically meaningful way if the child and the young person are not forced to accept these values by an external drill. There is no doubt that it is necessary for the young person to become a productive member of society. “However, it is wrong to assume that measures of subordination are necessary instead of those of making use of them in order to ensure productivity. The theory is correct when we acknowledge that social value is not achieved by negation and restriction, but by positive exploitation of innate, individual dispositions in activities of social importance” (ibid., 161). Individuality itself has a social value. The necessary socially relevant productivity also includes the ability of adults to earn their living and that of their children through their work. Without this ability, he is a “parasite that the others have to drag through with their work. He loses one of the most educative life experiences for himself ” (ibid., 161). On the other hand, it must be avoided that “the existing economic conditions and norms are accepted as final. The democratic idea

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demands that the abilities be developed to such an extent that everyone can choose from the available professional options and is able to fill his profession” (ibid., 162). For Dewey, democracy is not only a political category, it is not only a form of government, but a way of life in which the most diverse individual activities of a manual, artistic or scientific nature can be developed and yet serve the society. This consideration makes it possible to specify his fundamental thesis that “the process of life” is the “highest value” as follows: “We must hold on to the fact that value for society finally means nothing other than the ability to participate in the exchange of experience. This includes everything that increases the value of our own experience for others, as well as everything that enables us to take a richer share in the valuable experience of others” (ibid., 163). However, the present society is still far from this ideal. This is made clear by a look back at its historical origins. With the development of the natural sciences in the seventeenth century, industry arose. Political power shifted from the land-owning nobility to the merchant bourgeoisie. The feudal system could no longer be maintained. “But in the place of feudalism, capitalism, not social humanism, arose” (ibid., 369). The scientific and technical progress did not, as many believed at the time, lead to “new moral concepts”, but only to a more effective exploitation of the new technical and economic possibilities. The result of this development is the dominance of a class and the “class interest” associated with it (ibid., 387). This means: “The factory owner, the banker, the industrial captain have displaced the hereditary nobility, which used to dominate society. The one great problem of social restructuring is obviously an industrial problem, the relationship between labor and capital” (ibid., 405). In formulations reminiscent of Marx’s criticism of society, Dewey points out that there is a danger that the worker will become “an appendage of the machine” (ibid., 406). This means: “Today the worker has to adapt to the machine, instead of vice versa the tool to his own needs” (ibid.). This not only results in a reduction of his physical activity to a few hand movements, but also, despite the scientifically sophisticated technology of modern industry, to a spiritual impoverishment. While on the one hand the intellectual possibilities of industry have multiplied, the educational value of industrial work for the masses has become much lower today than in the time when one produced for the local market by handiwork. In contrast to Marx, Dewey does not rely on a revolution to change social conditions, but on reform. Its goal is a society in which everyone is occupied with something that makes the lives of others more livable and thus makes

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the bond between individual people clearer, which lays the foundation for them. Dewey is under no illusions about the resistance to reform of the education system; because this can be “dangerous for the ruling class” (ibid., 411). The “ideal” of a newly formed, democratic society through education meets the “hostility of those who today control industry, and of course see that such an educational system, if generalized, would threaten their ability to exploit others for their own purposes” (ibid.). In a democratic, humanistic society, as Dewey strives for, domination by one class and subordination of the other have no place. Dewey nevertheless clings to the belief in this ideal, which he does not hesitate to call “religious”. He strictly differentiates it from all previous religions. His criticism of religions comprises two aspects. The many conflicting religions cannot make their claim to truth valid in a general, i.e. reasonable, way. Only science can do that. In his essay A General Belief from 1934 he emphasizes: “There is only one safe way to truth—the way of patient, cooperative research that uses observation, experiment, protocol and controlled reflection” (Dewey 2004, 251). The second objection to religion relates to its negative practical consequences. Dewey notes: “People have never used their powers to the full to promote the good in life, because they have waited for an external power to them and nature to take over this work for which they are responsible” (ibid., 262). The “idea of God” or the “idea of the divine” (ibid., 265), which Dewey represents, is not in the past, but in the future. It can only be realized through the joint effort of people. Dewey summarizes his pragmatic religious attitude, which aims at the “unification of what is known at a given time” and the “unification of human desires and purposes”, as follows: “It is our responsibility to preserve, pass on, correct and expand the legacy of values we have received, so that those who come after us will receive it in a more solid and secure, more generally accessible and more generously shared form than we have received it. Here are all the elements for a religious belief that is not limited to a sect, a class or a race. Such a belief has always been implicitly the general belief of humanity. It remains to make it explicit and militant” (ibid., 291 f.). In his Theory of Appreciation from 1939, Dewey summarises his concept of a value-based ethic. His thesis is that “appreciation phenomena have their immediate source in biological behaviour patterns and owe their specific content to the influence of cultural conditions” (ibid., 359). Appreciations have their basis in the “vital impulses” of life, which condense into “wishes“.

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Wishes differ in a mere wish (wishing), which awaits fulfilment, and active wishing (desiring), which actively pursues the desired goal. It then has the quality of an “interest” (cf. ibid., 309). Pursuing a goal requires a situation of deficiency (cf. ibid., 327). This deficiency poses a problem that challenges the person intellectually. This means that “whenever appreciation occurs, an intellectual factor is present—a factor of research” (ibid.). The aim is that this research is based on a reliable empirical basis, as exists in the natural sciences. All that is necessary is to “transfer them to human or social phenomena” (ibid., 354 f.). An example would be the doctor who “has to determine the value of different approaches and their results in the case of a particular patient” (ibid., 339). An appreciation thus empirically founded relates just as much to the goal of problem solving, i.e. for example health, as to the assessment of the means necessary for this. “It is a contradiction in itself to attribute immediate value to a fulfilment without also doing so in the case of the means to achieve it” (Dewey 2007, 372). However, their specific value is only given to goals and means in the “contextual situation”. Often it is only when a goal is achieved that it becomes apparent that the use of the means is disproportionate and that its shift, its modification or even its waiver is necessary. Sometimes a means also turns into a goal to be pursued itself. The appreciation includes both emotional factors, which have their origin in “vital impulses” and “wishes”, and intellectual factors of the considered choice of appropriate goals and means. Dewey sees a problem of his time—i.e. in 1939—in a “separation of the intellectual and the emotional”. This separation explains the “rise of dictatorships”, in which “emotional loyalties and bonds” become autonomous vis-à-vis an appropriate “intellectual loyalty”. Both sides are to be brought into harmony. He says: “The practical problem that has to be tackled is the creation of cultural conditions that support the types of behaviour in which emotions and ideas, wishes and assessments are integrated” (Dewey 2004, 359). Dewey’s impact history in the field of education is undeniable. It concerns the concept of the work school Kerschensteiners as well as Hartmut von Hentigs laboratory school. Meanwhile, his reform pedagogical approaches have become common knowledge. His pragmatic theory of truth was initially met with strict rejection from Bertrand Russell and Max Horkheimer. Meanwhile, the transcendental pragmatic approach von Apel and the consensus theoretical von Habermas (see Chap. XI, 3) are approaching Dewey’s concept of truth, a concept of “patient, cooperative research.”

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2 The ‘Valuing’ (Scheler) “Loving and hating finally form the highest level of our intentional emotional life. Here we are farthest from all states. Language already expresses this—it separates us from response reactions […]. In response to reactions (e.g. revenge), we want to call love and hate ‘spontaneous ’ acts. In love and hate, our mind does something much greater than ‘responding’ to already felt and possible anticipated values. […] I mean that the act of love is not essentially characterized by the fact that it after felt value or after anticipated value ‘responding’ to this value, but rather that this act represents a ‘creative ’ role in our value perception—and that only he plays it—that it is, so to speak, a ‘movement ’ in the course of which new and higher, i.e. completely unknown to the respective being, values ​​flicker and flash up. So it follows not the valuing and anticipating, but strides ahead of him as his pioneer and leader. In this respect, it is not responsible for the values themselves, ​​ but for the circle and sum of the values ​​that can be felt and anticipated by a being at a given time, a ‘creative ’ achievement. In the discovery of the laws of love and hate, which, with regard to the level of absoluteness, a priori and originality, surpass the laws of anticipating and the laws between the corresponding value qualities, all ethics would be completed.” (Max Scheler: The Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values. Bonn 2000, 266 ff.). In 1874, Max Scheler was born in Munich and raised in the Jewish faith. In 1895, he first studied medicine in Munich and then in Berlin, in addition to philosophy and sociology with Dilthey and Simmel. In 1896, he continued his studies in Jena and received his doctorate from Rudolf Eucken. There he also habilitated in 1899 with a work on the topic The transcendental and the psychological method. In the same year, he converted to the Catholic faith. In 1900/01, he met Husserl in Halle, whose phenomenology deeply impressed him. In 1906, he habilitated to Munich and came into contact with the local phenomenological circle. In 1910, he lost his lectureship due to private involvement. In 1914, he registered as a volunteer, but was not accepted for health reasons. In his work The Genius of War and the German War from 1915, Scheler had still emphasized that war is something that “springs from the spirit” (Scheler 2008, 15), but after the war he recognized that this “had no political and economic sense” (Mader 1980, 74). He now assigns the task of “spiritual renewal” to Catholicism and becomes a leading Catholic thinker in Germany himself. In 1918, he was appointed director of

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the Institute for Social Sciences in Cologne and also appointed professor of philosophy and sociology at the university. In his study Christian Socialism as Anti-Capitalism from 1919/20, he combined the idea of socialism with that of a “Christian League of Nations” (Scheler 2008, 652). From 1922 at the latest, he distanced himself from the official teaching of the Catholic Church. In 1928, he was called to the University of Frankfurt, but died shortly after his appointment (cf. Mader 1980). In his work Der Formalismus in der Ethik und die materiale Wertethik. Neuer Versuch der Grundlegung eines ethischen Personalismus (Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values. New attempt to lay the foundation of an ethical personalism ) from the year 1916, Scheler sets himself apart from Kant’s ethics in a critical manner (cf. Stegmüller 1969, 111). He accuses Kant of the fact that the mere appeal to the law of practical reason is empty; it does not do justice to the fullness of moral phenomena. Kant justifies his formalism by saying that every ethics determined content-wise and materially is “of only empirically-inductive and aposteriori validity” (Scheler 2000, 30). This is—so Kant in the interpretation of Scheler—“necessarily hedonism and goes back to the existence of states of pleasure in the objects” (ibid., 31). As a mere formal ethics, Kant’s ethics avoids content-related recommendations, advice, or commands regarding how man could become happy or which specific duties he would have to fulfill. Kant’s ethics leaves the matter of the action to the free discretion of the acting individual. It merely requires him to check the maxim of this action for its compatibility with the categorical imperative. Kant’s ethics contains the following dichotomy: An ethics is either oriented towards empirical content, such as e.g. happiness, wealth, health, beauty, etc., then it is material, or it is oriented towards the a priori given law of practical reason, then it is formal. A non-empirical, apriori arguing, material ethics is not thinkable for Kant. This is exactly what Scheler wants to achieve with his material ethics of value. It is supposed to address material content which is, however, given a priori and not empirically. The method which is supposed to make this possible is provided by phenomenology. In doing so, he joins forces with Husserl’s philosophy, who conceived phenomenology as a new transcendental idealism. Husserl does this by appealing to the reflective ability of the ego to make itself the spectator of its own acts of consciousness. In doing so, it splits itself up to a certain extent into a “natural-worldly ego” and a transcendental ego, which watches the acts of consciousness carried out by the natural ego from a neutral distance (cf. Husserl 1963, 16). The transcendental ego frees itself in this way not only from all practical engagement of the “world-given ego”, but also from all “validities of being”, which the

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natural ego attributes to the objects it perceives. In this way, it becomes possible to arrive at an intuition of essence of objects, which are exempt from the contingency of empirical objects. The method in question is a transcendental idealism, because the “spectator” is no longer an empirical ego, but a transcendental subject and the objects in question are not empirically given things, but the “eidos”, the essence of the thing itself. Scheler builds on this method with his ethics. In order to arrive at a pure intuition of a value, the value itself must be distinguished from the thing which is to be determined as merely a carrier of the value. He chooses the relationship of color to the thing which bears this color as a comparison. The quality of the perceived color is completely independent of the respective thing to which this color is attached. The complete independence of the color quality from the colored thing can be transferred to the relationship of value and its respective carrier, be it a thing or a human being. Scheler says: “Just as I can bring myself to grasp a red as a mere extensive qualia, for example, in a pure spectral color, without regarding it as a coating on a physical surface, indeed only as a surface or as something spatial at all, so I can also values such as pleasant, attractive, lovely, but also friendly, distinguished, noble, principle accessible, without that I imagine them here as properties of things and people” (Scheler 2000, 35). The values he ​​ mentioned have a material character, but are not objects of sensory experience, but objects of an eidetic intuition. Scheler also characterizes this intuition as a phenomenological experience. He emphasizes that, in contrast to Kant, there is also a specific type of experience that is not dependent on the material of sensuality, but is apriori directed at the essence of a thing. For this reason, the knowledge of the essence of a value does not arise from the fact that a wealth of valuable things or people would have to be empirically experienced in order to be able to define the essence of a certain value inductively, i.e. by way of generalization. The intuition does not arise inductively, but it is intuitive. Scheler explains this thought as follows: “That a person or an action is ‘noble’ or ‘common’, ‘brave’ or ‘cowardly’, ‘pure’ or ‘guilty’, ‘good’ or ‘evil’, that is not only certain to us through constant features on these things and processes that we can specify, but it is also in such. Under certain circumstances, it is enough for us to grasp the essence of these values ​​in a single action or a single person” (ibid., 36 f.). The example shows another aspect of the phenomenological method. It becomes clear from the difference between an inductive knowledge, which is supposed to lead to the definition of a concept in the end. Here too, the comparison with the perception of color is helpful. Just as it is impossible to convey the knowledge of colors to a blind person through concepts and

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definitions, it is just as impossible to replace the intuitive essential intuition of a value with its definition. Scheler remarks: “Where we rightly attribute a value, it is never enough to try to derive it from characteristics and properties that do not belong to the sphere of value appearances themselves; it must always be given in an intuitive way […]. Just as it is pointless to ask about the common properties of all blue or red things, since only the one answer would be possible: they are blue or red, so it is pointless to ask about the common properties of good or bad actions, attitudes, people, etc.” (ibid., 37). Scheler shares with Husserl the thesis that there is a specific form of intuition that does not rely on the senses, but grasps the essence of a thing. It is unmistakable that the phenomenological essential intuition and the one developed by Plato the idea of intuition is closely related. An example can illustrate this: For Plato, although a beautiful vase can be destroyed, the idea of beauty cannot. In just this sense, Scheler says: “The value of friendship is not challenged by the fact that my friend turns out to be false and betrays me” (ibid., 41). He emphasizes the proximity to Plato himself, saying: “Value qualities are […] ‘ideal objects ’” (ibid., 43). The complete independence of the value from its carrier is shown by the fact that it is possible to recognize a value without the relationship to a carrier even showing itself. Scheler explains this situation as follows: “We know a stage of value apprehension, where the value of a thing is already very clear and evident to us, without the carriers of this value being given to us: For example, a person is embarrassing and repellent or pleasant and sympathetic to us, without us still being able to state what this is due to” (ibid., 40). Despite the close proximity to Plato, the differences are not to be underestimated. For Plato, the contemplation of ideas takes place with the “eyes of the spirit.” But the thing that is seen is outlined in its essential form by means of thinking. The result is a definition. In the dialogue Euthyphron an attempt is made to define piety and in the dialogue Laches courage. Scheler uses different terms to characterize his method of grasping the essence of values. He speaks of “intuition of essence,” of “phenomenological experience,” and of “knowledge of values.” However, the term “feeling of values” is of central importance. For Plato, as for the majority of the tradition that followed him, feeling belongs to the realm of the senses and does not allow for true, i.e. lasting knowledge. An exception to this tradition is represented by Pascal, who, with his logique du coeur, attributed a form of knowledge to the heart itself. Scheler wants to build on this (cf. ibid., 261). He differentiates the following three types of feeling: “1. The feeling of feelings in the sense of states, and its modes, e.g. suffering, enjoying. […] 2. Secondly, we distinguish the feeling of emotional character traits of objects

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(the calm of a river, the cheerfulness of the sky, the sadness in a landscape) […]. 3. The feeling of values, such as pleasant, beautiful, good; here only does feeling gain a cognitive function in addition to its intentional nature, which it does not possess in the first two cases” (ibid., 262 note). Only this third type has specific ethical relevance. Scheler remarks: “In the course of emotional feeling, ‘the world of objects’ is ‘opened up’ to us, but merely from the perspective of their value ” (ibid., 265). The “intentional emotional life” forms the basis and center of the feeling of values. Its expressions are affection and aversion, or, in the words of Scheler, love and hate. They are not states of feeling, but are intentional. They are always directed at something, i.e. we always love something or hate something. What is loved represents a positive value, what is hated a negative. In the act of love or hate, hitherto “completely unknown values” are uncovered and recognized. In this respect, they play a “discovering” role. Love and hate have a similarly central importance for Scheler as “Eros and Thanatos” or the “life instinct and death instinct” have for Freud (cf. Chap. VII, 2). Scheler therefore concludes: “In the uncovering of the laws of love and hate […] all ethics would be completed” (cf. quote). But Scheler does not stop at this dichotomy. As for Nietzsche, with whose “revaluation of values” he intensively dealt (cf. Chap. IX, 3), there is for Scheler a ranking of values with a total of four ranks: • The lowest level of value modality is the value range of the “Pleasant” and “Unpleasant”. “It corresponds to the function of the sensory feeling (with its modes, the enjoyment and suffering); and on the other hand, the states of feeling of the ‘emotional feelings’, sensual pleasure and pain correspond to it” (ibid., 122). The difference between pleasant and unpleasant is absolute. The pleasant is always preferred to the unpleasant. However, this is not contradicted by the fact that different cultures or individual people experience different things as pleasant or unpleasant. The distinction itself is not affected by this. It also applies not only to humans, but also to animals. It is also not subject to a biological development law. It cannot be refuted by any ethnologist or zoologist, because it is a priori. • The second modality is determined by the values of the “vital feeling”. The guiding opposition is that of the “noble” and the “common”. It corresponds to the opposition of the “good” or “competent” and the “bad”, not of the “evil”. The word noble is understood here in the same way as “noble horse”, “noble tree”, “noble race” or “nobility” is used in colloquial language. As a result values would be “well-being” and “welfare”. The welfare of a

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community concerns “the sum of its interests”. The vital feeling includes “the feeling of the ‘ascending’ and the ‘descending’ life, the feeling of health and illness, the feeling of age and death, feelings like ‘weak’, ‘powerful’ etc.” (ibid., 124). Vital values are also “‘courage’ and ‘fear’, revenge impulse, anger, etc.” (ibid.). “The vital values are a completely independent value modality, and can neither be ‘derived’ from values of the pleasant and useful, nor from spiritual values in any way” (ibid.). • The third modal unit is formed by the “‘spiritual values’”. They claim an absolute independence from the entire “body and environment sphere”. This can also be seen in that it is possible to sacrifice life values for ​​ their sake. However, they are also acts of feeling values. These are the “functions of spiritual feeling and acts of spiritual preferring and loving and hating” (ibid.), which are constitutive for them. The spiritual values ​​separate into three main types: They are a) the aesthetic values ​​of “‘Beautiful ’ and ‘Ugly ’”. They are b) the values ​​of the “‘Right ’ and ‘Wrong ’”, which form the basis of the legal system of a state and are independent of the currently valid positive legislation. Finally, there are c) the “values of ​​ ‘pure truth knowledge’”, as they are embodied by philosophy, in contrast to the positive sciences, whose interest is only the “mastery of phenomena”, the “values of ​​ ‘science’” and the “values of ​​ ‘culture’”, to which also the “art treasures” and “scientific institutions” belong, therefore only represent derived values. • The last and highest value modality is that of the “Holy and Unholy ”. The Holy appears only on objects, “which are given as ‘absolute objects ’ in the intention”. This does not mean that there is a specific class of objects involved, but only that these objects are in a “‘absolute sphere ’”. It is again irrelevant for this value modality, “what has been considered ‘holy’ at different times and among different peoples on things, forces, real persons, institutions, etc. (from fetishistic ideas to the purest concept of God)” (ibid., 125). These questions do not belong in an “apriori value doctrine ” from the Holy. The feelings corresponding to the value of the Holy are those of “‘blessedness ’ and ‘desperation ’”, which represent the “‘nearness ’” and “‘distance ’” to the Holy in experience and have nothing to do with “‘happiness ’ and ‘misfortune ’”. The specific ways of responding to the Holy are “‘faith ’ and ‘unbelief ’”, “‘reverence ’”, “‘adoration ’” and the like. The act in which we originally grasp the Holy is a certain type of “love ”, a love that “precedes all ‘holy’ objects” and belongs to its essence it is to go “on persons, i.e. on something of personal being form, regardless of what is the content and which ‘concept’ of person is involved. The self-worth in the

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sphere of values ‘holy’ is therefore essentially a ‘person value ’” (ibid., 126). Subsequent values for the “holy person values” are ideas of persons, “‘pure person types ’ , such as saints, geniuses, heroes, leading spirits” etc. and the communities associated with them such as “love community”, “church” and similar. In the second part of his Ethics, he develops the outlines of an “ethical personalism”. For him, the person is not a substance, it never has an objective character for him, but consists in the performance of acts. Scheler defines it as follows: “The person is the concrete, self-essential being-unit of acts of different beings, which in itself [..] precedes all essential act-differences (in particular also the difference between outer and inner perception, outer and inner will, outer and inner feeling and love, hate, etc.), The being of the person ‘foundations ’ all essentially different acts ” (ibid., 382f.). But the person is not to be understood as the sum or the context of her acts. “On the contrary, the whole person is contained in every fully concrete act” (ibid., 384). The only way a person is given is “her act of action itself ” (ibid., 386). This understanding of the person has consequences for his ethics. He says: “It has to hold on to the value personalism, for which the very last meaning and value of community and history lies precisely in the fact that they represent conditions under which the most valuable personal units can be revealed and act freely in and on them. In the mere being and acting of the persons the value personalism therefore finds all community and history its goal” (ibid., 496). The increasing mechanization of society makes the “particular and self-valuable of the personal spiritual shapes” only all the more apparent. But although the personal value represents the highest of all values,—so Scheler—“the ethical personalism represented here proceeds from the proposition that it belongs to the essence of every possible value growth of the person that she never intentionally intends her own moral value. […] every kind of ‘moral pride’, every willful orientation to one’s own ‘dignity’, instead of to the value of material value or condition value to be realized”, (ibid., 497) are incompatible with ethical personalism. Another feature of the person is their individuality. Person and individual are not opposites, but a unity. Scheler emphasizes: “Every human being is ‘just in the same measure, as he is a pure person, an individual and therefore different and unique being from every other, and analogously his value is an individual and unique value” (ibid., 499). It is precisely this individuality that makes the person the “bearer of moral values” As a result of the being of the individual person, their morally relevant actions follow, as Scheler emphasizes in connection with Thomas Aquinas. This means: “Even the

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‘willing’ of the person can never be better or worse than the person whose will is in question” (ibid.). This applies to both individual persons and “total persons”. Scheler understands total persons to be larger communities, i.e. “e.g. the Greek or Roman people”. However, the principle of individuality also has a specific ethical consequence. If there is a generally valid and objective good for the individual person as well as for the total person, then in addition to this there is also an “individual-valid ” good for the individual person, which is nevertheless just as objective and insightful. This is conscience. The individual conscience makes the person ethically unique. It is also the limit of the state. “Therefore, the state (in the extreme) may indeed demand the sacrifice of the life of the person (e.g. in war), but never the sacrifice of the person as such (of their salvation and conscience), or even an unlimited ‘dedication’ of the person to it” (ibid., 503). Scheler’s reception history is particularly evident in the work of Nicolai Hartmann. But Heidegger was also deeply impressed by him. He dedicated his book Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics to him. Scheler had a wider-ranging impact with the anthropological study The Position of Man in the Cosmos published shortly before his death in 1928. The principle of the openness of the world to man, which he advocated at the same time as Heidegger, became the central thesis of philosophical anthropology in the twentieth century.

3 The Ideal Realm of Values (Hartmann) “The moral value judgment that says ‘breach of trust is outrageous’ or ‘malicious joy is reprehensible’ does not mean the feeling as outrageous or reprehensible. The value judgment is rather this feeling itself, or its expression. But what it ‘means’ is something else, an objective, independent-of-feeling outrageousness and reprehensibility. It means something that is present-athand, that is. But of course an ideal that is present-at-hand. This corresponds to the conviction that accompanies every genuine value judgment, that every other person must judge and feel the same value in the same way. And here, too, the universality and necessity revealed in such conviction is not a psychological fact. For in fact, other people sometimes feel and judge differently. And the person making the judgment knows, or can very well know, about the deviation of another person’s value judgment from his own. But it is just the same with mathematical insight. Not everyone is capable of it; not everyone has the vision, the ethical maturity, the intellectual level,

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to see the matter as it is. Nevertheless, the universality, necessity, and objectivity of the value judgment is right in the idea. For this universality does not mean that everyone is capable of the relevant value insight. It means only that whoever is capable of it, i.e., whoever reaches the sense of it intellectually at all, must necessarily feel and judge morally in this way and not otherwise.” (Nicolai Hartmann: Ethics. Berlin 1962, 155). Nicolai Hartmann is born on 20.02.1882 in Riga. In 1902 he first studied medicine in Dorpat, then from 1903 to 1905 classical philology and philosophy in Petersburg. He continued his studies in 1905 in Marburg with the Neo-Kantians Cohen and Natorp. In 1907 he was awarded his doctorate, in 1909 he was habilitated. From 1914 to 1918 he served as an interpreter and intelligence officer. In 1919 he became a Privatdozent in Marburg and there met Heidegger. In 1921 his book Outlines of a Metaphysics of Knowledge was published. In 1922 he succeeded Natorp in Marburg. In 1925 he moved to Cologne and there became a colleague of Scheler. His Ethics published in 1926 continued Scheler’s material value ethics. In 1931 he was called to Berlin. His, in the strict sense, ontological works were published: The Problem of the Spiritual Being (1933), Foundations of Ontology (1935), Possibility and Reality (1938) and The Structure of the Real World (1940). From 1945 he taught in Göttingen. He died there in 1950 (cf. Morgenstern 1997). Hartmann’s philosophical development starts with the Neo-Kantianism of his teachers Cohen and Natorp. But already in his first major work on the metaphysics of knowledge—in the very first sentence—he turns away from the Neo-Kantian ‘idealism of generation’ as from any form of idealism. He says: “The following investigations proceed from the assumption that knowledge is not a creation, generation or production of the object, as idealism of old and new currents of thought wants to teach us, but a grasping of something that is also present before all knowledge and independent of it” (Hartmann 1949, 1). He has thus already left the philosophy of the modern subject, which, according to Kant’s doctrine, prescribed the formal categories of knowledge to the objects of experience, and carried out an ontological turn. In a certain sense, he is thus returning to the ground of ancient philosophy, for which reason had a hearing and not a constituting or constructing character. The task of knowledge is to grasp the things in their respective structure. While Kant had accused ancient ontology of wrongly believing that

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it could read this structure from the things themselves, while a Copernican turn was necessary to realize that the objects of appearance are subject to the subjective forms of knowledge, Hartmann’s ontology emphasizes the autonomy and independence of the object of knowledge from all experience. In the ontological turn, being is again attributed priority over the knowing subject. The emphasis on the priority of being already leads to a rehabilitation of materialist thinking by Marx and, following him, by Bloch, to a priority of life over reason by Dilthey and Nietzsche and to the concept of a Fundamentalontology or a “new ontology” by Heidegger and Hartmann. Hartmann argues that the “real world” consists of several superimposed “layers of being” (cf. Stegmüller 1969, 245). He relies on a hierarchical structure, which, related to humans, can already be found in Plato, but is further developed by Aristotle into a comprehensive order of being. Aristotle distinguishes four levels of being: inorganic things, plants, animals, humans. Each level has the previous one as a prerequisite and is to be seen as the higher one. Levels and layers form a hierarchy. Hartmann remarks, referring to this: “The four main levels of physical, organic, mental and spiritual being are clearly recognizable in it” (Hartmann 1949a, 192). He emphasizes that the lower level can exist without the higher one, but never the higher one without the lower one. Schematically, this level order could be represented as follows: Inorganic Body Things

Physical Being

Plants and Lower Animals

Organic Being Physical Being

Higher Animals

Human

Mental Being Organic Being Physical Being

Spiritual Being Mental Being Organic Being Physical Being

The blank lines make it clear that there is a greater difference between the physical and the organic being on the one hand and the mental being on the other hand than between the physical and the organic. The two lower layers of being can be determined spatially, the mental cannot (cf. Hartmann 1949b, 124). For Descartes the distinction between “extended substance” (res extensa) on the one hand and feeling and thinking substance (res cogitans) on the other hand becomes the basis of his dualistic thinking. Hartmann replaces this dualism with a differentiated layer theory, which is characterized by the principle of “layer distance” (cf. ibid., 121). So he also makes a clear distinction between the mental and the spiritual being (cf. ibid., 126).

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In his book The Problem of the Spiritual Being Hartmann makes further differentiations within the spiritual realm. He distinguishes between the “personal spirit” and the “objective” and this from the “objectivated” (cf. Hartmann 1962a, 73). He characterizes the personal spirit, i.e. the human being as a person, as follows: “Only the personal spirit can love and hate, only he has an ethos, bears responsibility, attribution, guilt, merit; only he has consciousness, foresight, will, self-consciousness—all this in the primary and proper sense, not in the transferred” (ibid.). The “objective spirit” is the supra-individual spirit of history. Hartmann notes: “Only the objective spirit is the bearer of history in the strict and primary sense […]. Only he is supra-individual-common and yet at the same time real and living spirit” (ibid.). The “objectivated spirit” is represented by the works of humans, such as “the creations of literature, poetry, the fine arts, music”, but also by “buildings, technical works, […] weapons, utility and consumer goods, handicrafts and industrial products” (ibid., 416), to which the “inventive spirit of the human being” is attached. For the question of ethics, the “personal spirit” is of decisive importance, since only the human being as a person has an “ethos”. Hartmann develops, like Scheler, a value ethic. His fundamental thesis is: “Values have an introspection” (Hartmann 1962, 149). He explains it as follows: “Values​​ exist independently of consciousness. This can certainly grasp or miss them, but not make them, not spontaneously “set”. […] Value knowledge is true knowledge of being. In this respect, it is quite on a par with any kind of theoretical knowledge” (ibid.). As in theoretical philosophy, so too in practical philosophy, the notion of “having an opinion” has a twofold meaning. A distinction must be made between “a real and an ideal having an opinion”. While in the theoretical realm the real having an opinion refers to all things and events that are really there and have existence, the ideal refers to the realms of mathematics, logic, and “entities of all kinds”. In the realm of practical philosophy, the real having an opinion refers to “real action, real attitude, real decision of will”, but also to “real value judgment, sense of guilt, sense of responsibility” etc. Values are not part of this. Rather, the following applies to them: “The true mode of being of values is obviously that of an ideal having an opinion. They are originally constructs of an ethically ideal sphere, a realm with its own structures, its own laws, its own order. This sphere is organically connected to the theoretical ideal sphere, the logical and mathematical sphere, as well as to the realm of pure entities. It is a continuation of them” (ibid., 151).

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The independence of the ideal having an opinion of values from all reality has the following consequence: “It makes no difference at all to the actual value character of something, i.e. of a specific ‘material’, such as truthfulness or love, whether there are people in whose real behavior it is realized or not. Of course, the realization of the value material itself is valuable again; but this value is different and already has its roots in the value of that material” (ibid., 151). The moral values have their place in an ideal realm of values. Strictly speaking, one cannot even say that a value is realized, because “values as such always have the character of an ‘idea’ vis-à-vis reality” (ibid.). As an idea, the value merely endows a real behavior with the “character of being valuable”, but remains itself “beyond realization” (ibid.). A valuable behavior “corresponds” to an idea only. For value-oriented, valuable action, the person plays the decisive role as a “spiritual being”. The orientation towards values characterizes the human being as a person. Hartmann explains: The person “is that being whose activity is unequivocally value-oriented; or also that being whose purposeful activity can only be directed towards goals that appear valuable to him. The human being is the being that is fundamentally oriented towards values, and fundamentally opposed to unvalues (Hartmann 1962a, 159). This does not mean that man would not be able to do the “evil”, the “value-contrary” thing. Hartman explains this seemingly contradictory situation as follows: “He does not want the value-contrary for its own sake, but always for the sake of a valuable thing that he has in mind: one does not steal to damage, but because one wants the thing. But having the thing is valuable for the thief ” (ibid., 158). However, the thief realizes “values of lower order, and the moral value-contrary—the so-called evil of will—lies in the preference of the lower value over a much higher one, which is set aside and injured in this will. The morally evil is the inversion of the value order in action, in will, even in attitude. The good is the commitment in the sense of the higher value” (ibid., 159). Hartmann repeatedly confirms the thesis of Socrates that no one does evil voluntarily, but always only out of ignorance (cf. Hartmann 1949b, 165). Hartmann’s ignorance has the character of a lack of insight into the value order, it is a partial “value blindness” (ibid., 169). The positive aspect of this situation means that from the unforeseeable ideal world of values, different people and different epochs always only took certain value groups into view (cf. quotation). Hartmann distinguishes between a group of basic values ​​that underlie all moral values, and the value groups that have become dominant in the historical epochs of antiquity, the “Christian cultural sphere” of the Middle

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Ages and the present. The basic values include ​​ the good, the noble, the full and the purity. Within the basic values, the good has an outstanding importance. Nevertheless, the good, like all values, is “undefinable”, that is, “we do not yet know what the good is. Neither positive morality knows it nor philosophical ethics” (Hartmann 1962, 375). But although we cannot define it, we as individuals have a relationship to it and to the other values. This relationship exists in the feeling; because “the actual value quale can only be felt out by the living value feeling” (ibid., 374). The good has such a comprehensive character that one must neither see it as a single ideal being, distinguished from the others, nor as the mere sum of all the other values. It follows: The “good is neither the ideal being of the values, or their essence, nor the mere real existence of the valuable, but solely the teleology of the values in the real world” (ibid., 380). The opposite of the good is evil, which man is not able to strive for. Religions have personified the idea of evil in the form of Satan. “Satan is the idea of ​​the being that pursues value-contrary for its own sake. He does just what man cannot do” (ibid., 379). The historically significant values are, in a strict sense, “virtue values”. They have their origin in the past, but retain their current relevance in part in a modified form. They result in a value table, which can be represented schematically as follows (cf. Morgenstern 1997, 136): Antique

Christian Middle Ages

Present (“newer value view”)

Justice Wisdom Bravery Control Aristotelian virtues (e.g. mesotes )

Charity Truthfulness and sincerity Reliability and loyalty Trust and faith Humility, modesty, distance

distant love Giving virtue Personality Personal love

Within antiquity, these are the so-called four cardinal virtues—justice, wisdom, courage and self-control—as well as basic concepts of Aristotle’s ethics, which were discussed by Plato. For Plato, justice is the highest of the aforementioned virtues. “This corresponded to Plato’s orientation towards the community value” (Hartmann ibid., 419). In stark contrast to the Sophists’ understanding of the “right of the stronger”, Plato put forward the thesis: “It is better to suffer injustice than to do injustice” (ibid., 421). Just because Hartmann recognises the central importance of justice, it is not the highest, “but rather the lowest” value for him. This is due to its fundamentally important meaning. He says: “All higher spiritual values, all true cultural values, can only flourish where the body, life, property, personal freedom of

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action, etc. are guaranteed. […] So justice creates the space for higher values in reality” (ibid., 422). In addition, the value of justice is the basis for the mediation of legality and morality, which itself escapes legal regulation and remains “up to the conscience” of the moral person. What has come into focus—according to Hartmann—is the connection between “legality and solidarity” in the meantime. The idea of solidarity aims at the “co-responsibility” of the citizen for the state community. The state citizen is not only subject to the prevailing laws, but also fulfils this role “as a legislator”. “He therefore bears part of the responsibility for the existing law” (ibid., 425). Solidarity with the state community is “a value of conscience of the individual person”. This also has an impact on the design of criminal law. Therefore, the death penalty is problematic, because through it the “community loses a state citizen in the offender”. His antithesis to the treatment of an offender is therefore: “The priority is to regain him for the community, to restore him legally and as a state citizen, and the expiation of the penalty proves to be a means for this” (ibid., 426). With the spread of Christianity in the Middle Ages, new moral values come into consciousness. Among them, “love of neighbor” forms the basic value. It represents a higher level than justice, the basic value of antiquity. Hartmann emphasizes that it is possible to “detach this value from its religious roots”. The term “love of neighbor” used in the Gospels (agape) differs from the platonic eros as well as from the Aristotelian philia and the Stoic agapesis. “Love of neighbor is primarily the direction towards the neighbor, the other, namely the positive, affirmative direction, the weight transfer from the ego to the thou.” (ibid., 450). The attitude of love of neighbor can best be represented by the modern term “altruism”, which forms the opposite of “egoism”. The specific nature of love of neighbor can best be seen through its difference to justice. Justice refers to the whole of a community, but love of neighbor always has one person in mind. Justice is to a large extent “negative, its first demands are prohibitions and restrictions” (ibid., 451). Love of neighbor is positive. It says right away, “what one should do”. It is “creative” in that it recognizes from a concrete situation what needs to be done. But even if love of neighbor is higher than justice, it can not replace it. The whole of a community needs “the firm structure of the law, the strict form, the systematics”. The construction of a large scale can not be a matter of feeling” (ibid.). This difference can extend to the antinomy. “Justice can be very unloving, love of neighbor very unjust” (ibid., 453). For this reason, the idea of love of neighbor can not, as it was occasionally claimed in Christianity, represent the “unity of virtue”. That was an “overstretch”.

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And misguided is the love of neighbor also then, when behind it “the love of God” stands, “which has no ethical character anymore” and possibly even “with the idea of the ‘treasure gathering in heaven’ connects” (ibid., 459). Nevertheless, the love of neighbor not deformed in this way represents a unique value. “The loving look is prophetic, divinatory. He grasps the most complex inner situations from the slightest indications—from a half-word, a painful smile—in a flash (ibid., 457)”. Finally, the independence of its value shows itself in that it creates its own form of “solidarity”, a solidarity that by no means only refers to the neighbor, but nevertheless differs from the solidarity associated with justice. It is a solidarity that is directed towards the “co-world”, “towards what it commands the feeling of coexistence and the fact of coexistence in a world” (ibid., 460). In contrast to ancient and medieval values, those emerging in the present only loosely form a connection. The “distant love” brought into play by Nietzsche plays a particularly important role, which Nietzsche opposed to “agape” in an exclusive manner. Hartmann sees this as an “exaggeration” arising from the “need for paradox”. Although there are differences between the two, there are no opposites. The difference lies in the fact that “agape” is oriented towards the present, while “distant love” is oriented towards the future. Both orientations are justified. They are not mutually exclusive. The novelty of “distant love” lies in the fact that it is interested in the “distant, future human being”. It recognizes that we are responsible for future generations (cf. ibid., 489). What “distant love” aims at is nothing less than the “realization of human ideals”. This not only refers to an ethical ideal, but also includes “all aspects of humanity”. Hartmann describes it as follows: “The idea of humanity includes the rounding off of the whole human being, both physical and mental, of all abilities and of all noble goods that are within his power. The great longing of the creator goes beyond humanity in general, which is more perfect, fuller and richer than the given one” (ibid., 497). But before the realization of this ideal, it is important to take a closer look at it. Remarkably, Hartmann assigns a special role to art in this context. He says: “Most of the time, the creative artist, the poet, is the one who, full of foresight, gives voice to the prospective ethos” (ibid., 499); he already sees the future values. “How the artist expresses them remains his secret. But that he expresses them is his supra-aesthetic meaning in the historical process of humanization” (ibid.). The problem of freedom is fundamental for any ethics. Value-oriented action, responsibility and guilt can only exist under the condition of freedom. However, since the world is “determined throughout” for Hartmann,

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an antinomy of determination and freedom seems to arise. He solves this by distinguishing three different types of determination. On the one hand, there is the determination of nature by causal laws. On the other hand, there is a determination by normative ethical laws, which represent a “categorically higher determination” because it is a final determination. But even this would abolish the freedom of the person. The question is: “How can the freedom of the person exist in the midst of a world that is not only determined throughout by natural laws, but also by normative laws?” (ibid., 767). Hartmann’s answer: “This aporia can only be resolved if the person still contains a third type of determination within themselves, which they themselves throw into the balance of ethical reality,” i.e. “there is still a personal determinant involved” (ibid.). This determinant is also necessary if moral action is to be possible, because the categorical imperative is not capable of this. Only the human being as a person can do this. “He is, by virtue of his freedom, the real power that is alone capable of bringing about what ought to be in reality. Through him—but not automatically, but by calling on his freedom—the final determination of the real by values takes place” (ibid., 771). It is the person who prefers one value to another and realizes what is valuable. The freedom of the person represents a fundamental value that cannot be called into question by religion. God and the freedom of the person are mutually exclusive. Hartmann emphasizes: “It lies in the nature of man that, ethically, the human being is the most important, most current and at the same time the highest and most responsible thing of all that comes into his field of vision; certainly not the person as such, but the personal in every human being. That something in heaven or on earth, and even God himself, would be more important to him than the human being, would be ethically wrong, immoral, a betrayal of the human being” (ibid., 812). Hartmann’s impact peaked in the first half of the twentieth century. Scheler, Plessner and Gehlen dealt intensively with him. On the Marxist side, it is above all Georg Lukács and Wolfgang Harich who appreciate his ontology. According to this, impact and reception of Hartmann’s philosophy, but also the value ethics as a whole, declined (cf. Schnädelbach 1983, 231).

VII The Development of Morals—Genetic Concepts of Ethics

The genetic concepts of ethics differ from all others in one decisive aspect. All others appear as self-contained ethical designs that claim their universal, at any time valid, truth claim. The genetic concepts of ethics do not doubt this truth claim, but they draw attention to the anthropologically significant fact that the ability to judge morally must first develop. The genesis of morality therefore becomes its own topic in two respects: on the one hand, it is a question of evolutionary biology. It reads: In what way has a sense of morality developed in humans step by step as they evolved from the animal kingdom? Are there any general or at least higher, closely related, forms of moral consciousness in animals and how are they characterized? And further: Does human morality represent a break with respect to animal predecessors or are there only gradual differences to them? Answers to these questions are given by Darwin in his epoch-making book on The Descent of Man from 1871. It not only revolutionized man’s self-understanding, but also put the question of morality in a new light. The second aspect of a genetic view of ethics results from a developmental psychological perspective. The question is: How does the sense of morality develop in children? It is remarkable that this question is neglected by traditional and current ethical concepts. The addressee of ethics is always the adult human being, who is able to understand the moral terms, recommendations and imperatives used at the respective time and to act according to them. The child is either included in this moral discourse as a matter of course or excluded from it as a pre-moral being. However, careful observation leads to the insight that the child does not simply take over the morality © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer-Verlag GmbH, DE, part of Springer Nature 2023 W. Pleger, The Good Life, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-05969-7_8

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of adults at a certain point in time, but that it only gradually appropriates, reflects and possibly criticizes it. In addition, it becomes clear that children develop their specific forms of moral consciousness, which differ significantly from those of adults. There are different psychological theories about the way in which the child’s sense of morality develops. Two of them are to be discussed here. The first is Freud’s psychoanalysis. Freud discusses the topic of moral development in the context of mental illness. One question, for example, is: Can too high demands of morality have a negative effect on the development of the child? And what role should morality play for a healthy ego? The alternative concept to Freud is provided by Piaget and Kohlberg. Piaget asks the question: How does a sense of morality develop in the context of the child’s world view? Are there any specific sequences of phases and stages for this and, if so, how are they structured? In fact, Piaget discovers three invariant stages that every child goes through. Kohlberg joins with his model of the development of the child’s morality to this concept, but tries to further differentiate it. Finally, it is noteworthy that while the genetic concepts of ethics deal with the development of moral consciousness, they also clearly designate an end and a climax of this development. For Darwin, this is achieved with the emergence of conscience and the idea of comprehensive humanity, for Freud with a reasonable balance of the claims of the ego and morality, and for Piaget and Kohlberg with agreements of autonomous persons who feel obliged to the principle of justice. The genetic concepts of ethics do not dissolve the universal claim of ethics, but rather show the way in which it is achieved.

1 The Evolution of Conscience (Darwin) “We call a being moral who is able to compare his past and future actions or motives, and to approve or disapprove of them. We have no proof that any animal is capable of this. […] At the moment of action, man will undoubtedly be ready to obey the stronger impulse; and although he is sometimes led by it to the noblest deeds, he will much more frequently follow his selfish motives to the injury of others. But when, after their gratification, the former, now weaker, impressions are measured by the ever-present social instinct, and submitted to the judgment of his companions in thought, the remorse will be sure to follow in proportion to his great sensibility to the

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good opinion of others. He will feel remorse, regret, or shame; the latter almost exclusively refers to the judgment of others. He will make the more or less firm resolve to act differently in future, and this is conscience; for conscience looks back and serves at the same time as a guide to the future.” (Charles Darwin: On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. Stuttgart 1982, 140 u. 143). Charles Darwin is born in 1809 in Shrewsbury (England). From 1825 to 1831 he studies medicine and theology in Edinburgh and Cambridge. From 1831 to 1836 he undertakes a journey to South America and the Galapagos Islands (Darwin 2008a) with the research ship ‘Beagle’. From 1842 he lives on his estate Down House in Kent. There he processes the results of his research journey and writes his scientific works. In 1859 his main work On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life is published and in 1871 his work The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex. Darwin dies in 1882 in Down (Kent). He is buried in Westminster Abbey (cf. Hemleben 2009; Voss 2008; Pleger 2018, 162-170). Darwin’s main achievement in biology is that he replaced the traditional doctrine of the constancy of species with that of evolution. The idea of the constancy of species was common knowledge until the nineteenth century. However, Darwin found a predecessor of an evolutionary way of thinking in the concept of Lamarck (1744–1829), who attributed the origin of species to the inheritance of the use or non-use of organs, thus calling into question the doctrine of the constancy of species. The Lamarckism named after him was taken up by Darwin. Even though this thesis has been proven to be wrong, it nevertheless created the model of a natural history and with it the concept of evolution. Darwin’s question was: How can the hypothesis of historical development in the field of living beings be proven? In order to make the idea of the transition of one species into another plausible, he considered it necessary to look for similarities between the species. The most promising field of these similarities he found in the field of embryology. Not only is there a surprising similarity between the embryos of different mammals, but also between mammals and humans (cf. Darwin 1982, 9). It is this similarity that makes the belonging of humans to the animal kingdom unquestionable for Darwin.

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But embryology also teaches something else. If one compares the development of an embryo with the animal kingdom as a whole, one can see that a living being passes through forms in its ontogeny which are found in lower species. This not only proves the kinship of higher mammals, but also the kinship of the animal kingdom as a whole. Based on these similarities, the idea of the origin of species now gets a new accent. The change from one species to another appears to be less dramatic. It is no longer a jump, but variations. However, Darwin did not yet distinguish between a non-inherited variation (modification) and the mutation discovered by Mendel (1822–1884). Which factors are decisive for the origin of new species according to Darwin? In addition to the inherited effect “of a reduced use over many generations” (ibid., 37) of organs, which was emphasized by Lamarck, the most important factor for him is natural selection (natural selection). Darwin came across it when reading a book on population by Robert Malthus (1766–1834). He interprets Malthus as follows: If the population increases in geometric proportions, but the food production only in arithmetic, then in the resulting hunger catastrophes only the strongest individuals have a chance to survive and reproduce. In general: Under difficult living conditions, the living being has the greatest chance of survival, which is best adapted to its environment. Darwin comments on his discovery with the words: “Now I finally had a working hypothesis” (Darwin 2008, 129). The formulas that have established themselves for the designation of this fact are: struggle for life and survival of the fittest. Darwin assumes that man has developed from “ape-like ancestors”, which he counts among the primates. Their habitat was the forest. The humanization is associated with the fact that this habitat is left. The now ensuing development of man takes place in the following steps: upright walk—the release of the hands—training of the hands to a universal instrument of tool use and tool manufacture, including the increase in their sensitivity—transformation of the foot to a standing foot—loss of the ability to grasp of the foot and development of true bipedie, i.e. movement exclusively on the feet (cf. Darwin 1982, 59 f.). Here the principle of natural selection is expressed in all clarity. The upright walk and the further development of the hand to a universal tool give man an advantage over his environment in terms of survival. They condition each other and favor further changes that set in motion a significant change in the appearance of man. These include the change in the shape of the skull and the development of the brain. Darwin notes: “I think no

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one doubts that in proportion to his body, the significant size of man’s brain compared to the proportions in the gorilla or orangutan is closely related to his higher mental powers” (ibid., 63). When considering the mental abilities of man, Darwin emphasizes the differences between man and animal and tries to show everywhere that the animal already shows forerunners of the mental abilities of man. There are a total of five areas in which he examines the mental abilities: The first area includes abstraction, general ideas, self-consciousness and mental individuality. The second area deals with language, the third with the sense of beauty, the fourth with religion and the fifth with “sociability” and morality. It is already clear from the first aspect, self-consciousness, how Darwin tries to attribute mental abilities to the animal. He relativizes man’s monopoly on it by asking: Who wants to claim that an “old dog with an excellent memory and some imagination […] never thinks about the past joys and sorrows while hunting?” But this would be a kind of self-consciousness (ibid., 104 f.). The second area concerns language. That animals have a repertoire of sounds to make announcements to their fellow creatures is beyond question for him. Even more: “Parrots and other birds have the ability […] to associate certain sounds with certain ideas” (ibid., 107). Also in the area of language, the difference between animal and human is only in a significant gradual level. Darwin emphasizes: “The difference between animals and man lies only in his infinitely greater ability to associate different sounds and ideas, and this obviously depends on the high development of his mental faculties” (ibid., 107). With regard to the third area, the sense of beauty, he notes that this occupies a fixed place in the animal kingdom in the context of sexual selection, and something similar can be assumed for humans (cf. ibid., 117). The fourth, religious, area is based on a feeling that can already be found in animals. The most primitive level is already found in a dog. It consists in the complete submission to his master. The higher, reserved for humans, forms of “religious submission” are, however, “very complicated”. They consist of “love, complete submission to a sublime, mysterious something, a strong sense of dependence, fear, reverence, gratitude, hope for a hereafter and perhaps other elements” (ibid., 120). However, this feeling—according to Darwin—is no proof of God; because it could be a “hereditary imprint”, since “children are constantly taught the belief in God, so that it would be just as difficult for them to shake off this belief in God as it is for a monkey to shake off its instinctive fear of snakes” (Darwin 2008, 102 f.).

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A special position within the mental faculties is finally taken by the “social instincts” from which morality arises. With it, the field of ethics is reached. The starting point for the development of the moral feeling in humans is Darwin’s thesis that “man is a social being” (Darwin 1982, 136). As such, he has social instincts, which include parental love and child love; but also sympathy. The reason for sympathy lies in the aftermath of previous feelings of displeasure. The sight of a suffering fellow human being evokes in us the memory of our own suffering and arouses in us unpleasant feelings. The inevitably emerging sympathy leads to help. “So we are prompted to relieve the suffering of others, so that our own painful feelings are eliminated” (ibid., 133). Darwin also sees the emergence of the social instinct as the result of natural selection; “because those associations in which the greatest number of members were distinguished by mutual sympathy could best prosper and produce the greatest number of offspring” (ibid., 134). The idea that sympathy is the result of natural selection gives the “struggle for existence” a new, remarkable turn. It shifts the “the fittest survives” from an individual theoretical perspective to a social theoretical one. From an individual theoretical point of view, sympathy for others is hindering, if not even counterproductive; because it allows the survival of competitors in the struggle for existence; but also of weaker fellow creatures. Darwin’s social ethical concept is different. Since man as a “social animal” can only survive within an intact and strong group, the survival chance of the individual depends on the survival of the group. A group with strong social instincts is superior to a number of uncoordinated individuals. In this way, the group with social behavior gains an advantage in reproduction over individuals and groups in which social instincts are either not developed at all or only weakly. At the same time, the proportion of social instincts in the entire group increases. Groups with strong social behavior therefore not only have a more developed sense of morality, but they are also more successful in the struggle for survival. However, no matter how highly developed the social instinct may be, it is in competition and often in conflict with that of self-preservation, indeed with that of selfishness. This is usually the stronger one at the moment. So how can the social instinct assert itself against that of self-preservation and selfishness? The claim of social behavior is represented by the community itself. As a social animal, man is dependent on the recognition of this community. Even if the social instinct recedes into the background at the moment of action, man is nevertheless able to bring the claim of the community to bear within himself. Which ability does he have to do this? He can because he is able to develop a detached attitude towards himself. This means: He can compare

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and judge his actions and motives. This specific human ability is connected with further intellectual abilities. They include memory and imagination, i.e. the ability to imagine future actions and their consequences. These abilities are what enable man to “reflect” and come to a reasoned, moral judgment. This goes beyond the momentary action of competing instincts. On the basis of these abilities, Darwin comes to his central thesis: Man is “certainly to be called a moral being” (ibid., 140). It is also the imagination as the origin of the moral judgment that makes the emergence of conscience in humans understandable. Darwin explains the origin of conscience as follows: He assumes that at the time of an act, the human being is determined by the strongest impulses to act, which obey selfish motives. But after the act is completed and the satisfaction that then sets in, space is created for reflection. The human being perceives the “always present social instinct” in himself and measures his action against it. He realizes that he achieved his goal at the expense of his fellow human beings and becomes aware that his actions cannot stand before them. Since he has an interest in the good opinion of his fellow human beings, remorse arises over what he has done. “He will make the more or less firm decision to act differently in the future, and this is the conscience” (see quotation). The human being’s moral competence has a complex structure. Imagination, reflection, shame, remorse, conscience, but also social instincts and selfishness play together. Nevertheless, it must not be forgotten that all these aspects, specifically human as well as animal, have their biological basis in natural selection. This corresponds to the simple insight: “No tribe could hold together any longer if murder, robbery, betrayal were the order of the day” (ibid., 148). Law and morality are survival conditions for a human community. Darwin considers that conscience assumes the character of a habit over time in humans and that he also acquires such “perfect self-control” that “his own wishes and passions finally submit to his social sympathies and instincts, as well as to his sense of public opinion, without struggle and without hesitation. Hunger and the desire for revenge will no longer make him steal bread or take revenge” (ibid., 146). But Darwin goes one step further. The self-control, influenced by the “conscience”, becomes not only a habit controlled by public opinion, but, according to the theory of Lamarck, it is inherited. Darwin remarks: “It is possible, indeed […] even probable, that self-control, like other habits, is inherited” (ibid.). This assumption alone also explains the different moral level in different societies. Darwin claims: “Without the principle of inheritance of moral inclinations, the differences that one must assume in this respect between human races would be unexplainable to us” (ibid., 157).

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This thought leads to a number of cases in which moral properties are transferred or extinguished in the next generation. The first include the following: “There is obviously much truth in the assumption that the extraordinary progress of the Americans and their entire national character are the product of natural selection; because the more energetic, restless, brave people of all parts of Europe have emigrated to that great area in the last ten or twelve generations of mankind and have reaped rich rewards there” (ibid., 183). On the other hand, certain moral properties are extinguished as follows: “Criminals are executed or imprisoned for a long time, so that they cannot pass on their bad properties. Melancholy and mentally ill people are kept in custody or commit suicide. Violent, quarrelsome people often come to a bloody end” (ibid., 176). However, objections to the biological foundation of morality are possible; and Darwin himself discusses them. Firstly, the morality he outlined has so far only been a group or tribal morality. The survival chance of a group or tribe increases if the group strengthens its social behavior. But can the idea be generalized? Darwin is optimistic here. He says: “As man progresses in culture and small tribes merge into larger communities, the simplest consideration leads every individual in turn to the conviction that he must extend his social instincts and sympathies to all, that is, to the unknown members of the same nation. If he has reached this point, only an artificial barrier can prevent him from extending his sympathies to the people of all nations and all races” (ibid., 155). Darwin even goes one step further. The sympathy finally extends to the “goodwill beyond the limits of humanity, i.e. humanity towards animals” (ibid., 156). It is based on the developing “idea of humanity” (ibid.). These considerations make it clear that Darwin is here exceeding the principle of natural selection; because it only makes sense in the struggle for existence with competing animals. This leads to a second point that calls into question the validity of the principle of natural selection for the justification of morality. It can be illustrated by two examples. The first concerns negative selection in war. It is precisely the young, healthy and strong men who are sacrificed, while the unsuitable, physically or mentally weak are discharged and have a better chance of surviving and reproducing (cf. ibid., 173). In addition, “we use all our skill to keep the lives of the sick as long as possible” (ibid., 171). “As a result, even the weak individuals of civilized peoples can propagate their species” (ibid., 172). Moral feelings thus replace the principle of natural selection. Darwin notes: “The help we feel obliged to give the helpless is mainly due to the instinct of sympathy, which originally appeared as a side form of the social instinct, but became finer and more compassionate in the

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way already indicated. Now we can no longer suppress this sympathy, even if our consideration demanded it, without thereby losing our noblest nature” (ibid.). In addition, Darwin makes the optimistic assumption that the willingness to help one’s fellow human beings will become a habit over time and that this tendency, like other “habits after generations of practice, inherited to be” (ibid., 168). Darwin also dealt with the concept of utilitarian ethics discussed at his time. But although the principles of evolution seem to have a great similarity to utilitarian thoughts, Darwin makes a clear distinction between the social instinct, which he sees as the basis of morality, and the “principle of ‘greatest happiness’” propagated by utilitarianism (ibid., 152). He makes it clear with an example: “In the midst of a great danger, for example, a fire, if the man tries without hesitation to save a fellow human being, he will probably not feel any pleasure. […]. If he later thinks about his own behavior in such a case, he will certainly feel that there is a power hidden in him that is quite different from the search for pleasure or happiness; and this seems to be the deeply ingrained social instinct (ibid., 152).” It is the social instinct, this common “line of development” of man and animal, which is decisive and which prompts Darwin to take the general good or the welfare of the whole as the standard of morality instead of the general happiness (ibid., 153). Despite the shared development, however, the “moral feeling” of man is something unique. Darwin explicitly repeats his thesis at this point: “The moral feeling perhaps forms the best and highest distinction between man and the other animals” (ibid., 161). He summarises as follows: The “moral feeling, or our conscience” is “an extremely complicated feeling, arising from the social instincts, guided by the recognition of our fellow men, regulated by reason, self-interest and, in later times, by deep religious feelings, and confirmed by education and habit” (ibid., 169). Nevertheless, it can be formulated as a simple moral maxim, namely as the well-known Golden Rule: “Doing good to others—treating others as one would like to be treated oneself—is the cornerstone of all morality” (ibid.). Darwin’s reception history extends far beyond the field of biology. He has fundamentally revolutionised our understanding of man. Darwin’s theory of evolution has prevailed in its basic principles (cf. Hemleben 2009, 9). In contrast, social Darwinism and racial ideology cannot rely on him (cf. Voss 2008, 185). This is demonstrated by his ethical reflections, which are determined by the plea for a sympathy for mankind as a whole—including “all races”, by his decided criticism of slavery, which he calls a “monstrous blot on our boasted freedom” (cf. Hemleben 2009, 44), by the “idea of humanity” and the idea of a general progress of “moral culture”.

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2 It, I and ‘Super-I’ (Freud) “We assume that the soul life is the function of an apparatus […]. We have come to the knowledge of this psychic apparatus through the study of the individual development of human beings. The oldest of these psychic provinces or instances we call the It; its content is everything that is inherited, brought with us at birth, constitutionally fixed, thus above all the drives stemming from the body’s organization, which find their first, unknown to us, psychic expression here (in the It). Under the influence of the real external world around us, a part of the It has undergone special development. Originally equipped as a cortical layer with organs for receiving stimuli and facilities for protecting against stimuli, a special organization has been established which from now on mediates between It and the outside world. This area of our soul life we call the I. […] As a result of the long period of childhood during which the future human being lives in dependence on his parents, a special instance develops in his I in which this parental influence continues. It has been given the name of the Super-I. To the extent that this Super-I separates itself from the I or opposes it, it is a third power to which the I has to account.” (Sigmund Freud: Outline of Psychoanalysis. Frankfurt a. M. 1994, 42 f.). Sigmund Freud is born in 1856 in Freiberg (Moravia). From 1873 he studied medicine in Vienna. After his military service he completed his studies in 1881. In 1885 he became a private lecturer for nervous diseases. This was followed by a stay of study with the psychiatrist Jean-Marie Charcot at the Salpêtrière in Paris. In 1886 Freud opened a practice for nervous diseases in Vienna. In 1895 he published his Studies on Hysteria together with his colleague Josef Breuer. In 1910 the ‘International Psychoanalytical Association’ was founded. In 1930 Freud received the Goethe Prize of the city of Frankfurt, but already in 1933 his writings were burned by the National Socialists. After the “annexation” of Austria to the German Reich in 1938, Freud emigrated to London. There he died in 1939 (cf. Freud 1973; Jones 1984; Pleger 2018, 170–179). The psychoanalysis founded by Freud is a therapy of mental illnesses which is to be understood as a further development of the cathartic procedure practiced by von Breuer. In the course of this development he conceived his own anthropological approach, which comprises different models. Of particular importance is his genetic model, which includes the development of the ego and the moral development of the child. The starting point

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of this model is an original, organic unity, which differentiates itself in further development. Freud gives a condensed summary of his anthropology, which is focused on the concepts of “id”, “ego” and “superego” and forms a developmental unity, in his late, written during his emigration to England, Outline of Psychoanalysis from 1938. According to this concept, the “id” is the oldest psychic instance. It represents the human genome, his constitution and the “instincts derived from the body’s organization” (cf. quote). Freud characterizes the id as follows: “The power of the id expresses the actual life purpose of the individual. It consists in satisfying his inherited needs” (Freud 1994, 44). But what exactly is this life purpose, which is represented by “the dark id ”, which “forms the core of our being”? Freud’s answer is clear: “The id obeys the inexorable pleasure principle” (ibid., 94). It is the “pleasure-unpleasure sensations” that “dominate the processes in the id with despotic force” (ibid.). The id, ethically speaking, corresponds to a primitive hedonism, and this represents the first stage of moral development. Freud’s drive theory has changed over time. While he originally distinguished between a self-preservation and a procreation drive, he later combined both under a single one, which he called Eros. Around 1920, possibly also against the background of the experiences of the First World War, he conceived his opponent as the destruction or death drive. Freud describes the connection between the two drives as follows: “After a long period of hesitation and fluctuation, we have decided to assume only two basic drives, the Eros and the Destruction Drive […]. The goal of the first is to create ever-larger units and thus to preserve them, that is, to bind them, while the goal of the other is to dissolve connections and thus to destroy things. With the destruction drive, we can think of the fact that, as its final goal, it appears to reduce living beings to inorganic matter. We therefore also call it the Death Drive ” (ibid., 45). The assumption of an original destruction drive also met with much rejection among his followers (see Fromm 1977, 31 ff.). Freud expresses himself ironically about the critics of the destruction drive: “For the little ones do not like it when the human being’s innate inclination to ‘evil’, to aggression, destruction and thus also to cruelty is mentioned” (Freud 1974, 247 ff.). The id and the basic drives associated with it determine the human being throughout his life. Nevertheless, the id is not able to guarantee the existence of the human being. It is subject to a decisive deficiency. Freud formulates it as follows: “An intention to preserve one’s life and protect oneself from danger through fear cannot be ascribed to the id” (Freud 1994, 44).

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The preservation of life must be taken over by another instance, which, however, must first be developed. The prerequisite for this is the physical “organs for receiving stimuli”, the sense organs, which the id has formed. With them it comes into contact with the outside world. Freud remarks: “We give this area of our psychic life the name of the Ego ” (see quotation). The ego plays a central role for the human being. Its main task is self-preservation. It can only fulfill this if the ego can assert itself, both in the face of the challenges and dangers of the outside world, but also against the demands of the id. Freud describes the various tasks that the ego has to perform as follows: “As a result of the preformed relationship between sensory perception and muscle action, the ego has control over voluntary movements. It has the task of self-preservation, which it fulfills by learning about external stimuli, storing experiences about them (in memory), avoiding strong stimuli (by fleeing), responding to moderate stimuli (by adaptation), and finally learning to change the external world to its advantage in a purposeful way (activity); internally, against the id, by gaining mastery over the demands of the drives, deciding whether they are to be allowed to find satisfaction, postponing this satisfaction to favorable times and circumstances in the outside world, or suppressing their excitations altogether” (ibid., 42 ff.). However, this only succeeds if the ego acts flexibly. In relation to the outside world, this means that it either adapts to its peculiarities or changes them to its advantage, in relation to the id, that it either satisfies the instinctual demands, postpones them or completely suppresses them. This requires a high degree of judgement, and experience stored in memory is necessary to train this. In its mediating activity, the ego places greater importance on the reality of the outside world, i.e. the “reality testing ” (ibid., 95), than on the instinctual demands of the id. The ego represents the “reality principle ” (ibid.) in relation to the id. Because while the id “knows no concern for the preservation of existence, no fear” (ibid., 94), the ego has “set itself the task of self-preservation” (ibid., 95). But the development of the ego is not yet complete with the control of the ego over the id and the outside world. In relation to one part of the outside world, namely its parents, the ego develops a specific relationship. In relation to them, the “super-ego” is formed, which has the moral demands of the parents as its content. The super-ego represents the second stage of moral development. Freud emphasises that in the influence of the parents not only the “personal character of the parents” is expressed, but also “the family, racial and national tradition” as well as the social environment. “In the same way, the super-ego takes on contributions from later successors and

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replacement figures of the parents during the course of its individual development, such as educators, public role models, ideals revered in society” (ibid., 43). But the essential structures of the super-ego are only formed in the first five years of life. However, the decisive psycho-sexual development of the child also takes place in them. Freud emphasises that it is a mistake to deny and assume that early childhood sexuality only begins with puberty. Furthermore, it is necessary to expand the concept of sexuality. It does not by any means only refer to the use of the genitals, but includes all forms of pleasure which arise from the physical organisation of humans. On the basis of this expanded concept of sexuality, Freud describes four phases of the psycho-sexual development of the child. They are: the oral phase, the sadistic-anal, the phallic and, after a longer “period of rest”, the genital. Freud’s theory of destructiveness has also caused fierce criticism among his followers (cf. Horney 1997, 60 ff.), but he held on to it. He describes the first, the oral phase, as follows: “The first organ to appear as an erogenous zone and to make a libidinal claim on the soul is the mouth from birth. […] Early on, in the child’s stubbornly held sucking, a need for satisfaction can be seen which – although it arises from and is stimulated by nutrition – nevertheless strives for pleasure independently of nutrition and for that reason can and should be called “sexual ” (Freud 1994, 49). The second phase, the sadistic-anal, he characterizes as follows: “Even during this oral phase, sadistic impulses appear isolated with the appearance of teeth. To a much greater extent in the second phase, which we call the sadistic-anal, because here the satisfaction is sought in aggression and in the function of excretion. We justify the right to include the aggressive strivings under the libido on the assumption that sadism is a mixture of purely libidinal with purely destructive strivings, a mixture that from then on will not stop” (ibid., 50). The third, the phallic phase, proceeds very differently in boys and girls. Psychologically, this phase means the following: At first, both boys and girls have an intellectual interest in exploring sexuality. Both “proceed from the assumption of the general prevalence of the penis” (ibid., 50). But then the further development proceeds differently in boys and girls. The boy associates his “manual activity on the penis” with a sexual fantasy in relation to his mother. But due to the cooperation of a “castration threat” with the “sight of female penisloss” he experiences “the greatest trauma of his life” (cf. ibid., 50 f.). Freud describes this connection—based on the Greek tragedy, after which Oedipus killed his father and married his mother—as the Oedipus

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complex. It is different with the girl, who experiences her “lack of penis” as a disappointment that is often associated “with the first withdrawal from sexual life at all” (ibid., 51.). However different the development of boys and girls may be in this third phase, they agree in one thing: At the age of about five years, the psycho-sexual development is interrupted by the latency period, which represents a “pause for rest“. This ends with puberty. With it begins the fourth phase, the genital. While in the earlier phases the partial drives pursued pleasure independently of each other, in puberty they are subordinated to a general pleasure striving by the full organization of sexual functions. The psycho-sexual development is embedded in the context of the parent-child relationship. Each of these phases is part of education and, as such, determined by commands and prohibitions. They articulate the superego. This applies to the oral phase, in which the granted or withheld food plays the decisive role, as well as to the sadistic-anal, in which the focus is on cleanliness education. But of particular importance is the phallic phase, in which commands and prohibitions are combined with threats and disappointments. The child’s motive to obey his parents is “the fear of the loss of love ” (ibid., 96). It reaches its peak in the third phase. Freud therefore brings it into direct connection with the emergence of the super-ego. He says: “In fact, the super-ego is the heir of the Oedipus complex and only set after its completion” (ibid., 101). In ever greater measure, the super-ego takes the place of the hedonistic principle of pleasure, corresponding to a strict ethic of duty. But the development of the super-ego goes even further. Up to the age of five, the child identifies the commands and prohibitions it follows with its parents. It then enters a phase in which, through identification, these become “internalized into the ego, thus becoming part of the inner world” (ibid., 101). Through this identification, the super-ego becomes the “conscience” (ibid., 101). The inner voice of conscience replaces the actual commands and prohibitions spoken by the parents. But even more happens. It is significant that the super-ego, which has become conscience, “often displays a severity for which the real parents were not the model. Also, that it not only holds the ego accountable for its deeds, but also for its thoughts and unfulfilled intentions, which seem to be known to it” (ibid., 101). It is the excessive severity of the super-ego that, in connection with the other challenges of the inner and outer world, leads to a weakening of the ego and, in many cases, also to mental illness. Psychoanalysis as therapy has to do with the weakened, the sick ego. Remarkably, it is the maxim of self-knowledge, known and recommended since antiquity, that becomes

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Freud’s starting point for therapy. He says: “Our way of strengthening the weakened ego starts with expanding its self-knowledge. We know this is not everything, but it is the first step. The loss of such knowledge means a loss of power and influence for the ego, it is the next tangible sign that it is restricted and hindered by the demands of the id and the super-ego” (ibid., 72). The goal of ego-strengthening is to enable the patient to find an appropriate response to the three great challenges he faces every day: the challenge of the real world, the demands of the id, and the commands and prohibitions of the super-ego. The right answer is neither a blind submission to these demands, nor an equally blind rejection. Rather, it is a matter of testing them and, under the aspect of the ego’s self-assertion, mediating them with each other (cf. ibid., 43). Under the aspect of ethics, Freud’s considerations about the super-ego and conscience can be summarized as follows: his presentation is to be understood as a genealogy of morality from a therapeutic point of view. In the interests of the ego’s health, the moral demands must be lowered in the case of a weakened ego. But the ego-strengthening motivated by therapy is also not an end in itself. The goal is rather to create a balance, serving the health of the ego, between the ego, the id, the physical world and the moral demands of society. Freud’s ethics has two aspects. While “eros” and the “death drive” represent unchangeable anthropological constants, “super-ego” and “conscience” develop in a historical context and are subject to social, i.e. pedagogical, therapeutic and, in particular, cultural influences. In his work Civilization And Its Discontents, Freud points out that the moral demands of the super-ego, represented by the parents, do not stop when the child leaves the family and becomes an independent member of society; because now the “culture super-ego” (Freud 1974, 267) takes its place, which “forms its ideals” and makes its own demands. Under culture, Freud understands “the whole sum of achievements and institutions” by which man differs from animals. It serves two purposes: “the protection of man against nature and the regulation of the relations of men with each other” (ibid., 220). These regulations restrict man in his “claim to individual freedom” (ibid., 226). Therefore, he is in a constant conflict with culture, which can lead to “culture hostility“. The culture itself has to find an answer to this. Freud therefore emphasizes: “A large part of the struggle of mankind is dammed up around the task of finding a convenient, i.e. blissful, balance between these individual and cultural mass claims to find” (ibid.). The yardstick for this is reason. It represents the third stage of moral development. The effort to find a reasonable balance requires a critical review of the claims on both sides. The individual has to fulfill the demand

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of “justice” raised by the culture (ibid.). The “culture super-ego” represented by society is to be checked for the feasibility of its further demands. This mainly affects the commandment of love for one’s neighbor, raised by religion in our culture. Freud remarks on this: “The commandment ‘Love your neighbor as yourself ’ is the strongest defense against human aggression and an excellent example of the unpsychological procedure of the culture superego. The commandment is unenforceable; such a great inflation of love can only devalue, not eliminate the need” (ibid., 268). This also affects all religious commandments that refer to “promises of a better life to come”. His verdict is: “I think that as long as virtue does not pay off on earth, ethics will preach in vain” (ibid.). Freud relies on “science” and “reason” instead of religion (cf. ibid., 187). Nonetheless, Freud does not stop at a criticism of culture, quite the contrary. In his opinion, culture is of decisive importance for the “present time” (i.e. 1931). It is a question of war and peace. He says: “People have now brought it so far in the mastery of natural forces that they can easily exterminate each other with their help: They know this, therefore a good deal of their present unrest, their misfortune, their mood of anxiety” (ibid., 270). The only way out of this situation can be offered by culture, which is to be understood as an antithesis to war. Freud formulates his expectation as follows: “The question of destiny for mankind seems to me to be whether and to what extent the development of their culture will succeed in overcoming the disturbance of coexistence by the human aggression and self-destruction drive” (ibid.). Freud’s thesis is: Against the danger of war, only a strengthening of culture and—the “ideal state”—against the aggression drive can develop a “dictatorship of reason” (cf. ibid., 284). The conclusion is: According to Freud, the development of morality essentially comprises three stages. The first, in which the id prevails, is determined by the pleasure principle. It follows the ethical type of hedonism. On the second stage, not only the ego develops, but also the superego and the conscience with their strict commands and prohibitions. This stage corresponds to the type of duty ethics. On the third stage, the healthy ego learns to create a reasonable balance between the conflicting challenges of the id, the real outside world and the superego. It is able to preserve itself, participate in culture and, ideally, make a positive contribution to the development of a peaceful society. If this stage is reached, it can be assigned to a reason-based ethics that is committed to the reality principle. If one compares the evolutionary moral development by Darwin and the developmental psychological by Freud, the following similarities and differences can be observed: For Darwin too, the development of morality

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comprises three stages. While the first stage is determined by selfish and social instincts that the human being shares with numerous animals, especially herd animals, this is dominated by the pleasure principle with Freud. On the second stage, a conscience develops with Darwin, similar to Freud, which, although it is also related to the human community, does not simply represent a mirror image of the conventions prevailing in it, but is an autonomous moral instance that is oriented towards the welfare of the group. On the third stage, Darwin develops a “concept of humanity” that includes humans and even animals and ultimately overcomes the struggle between peoples and races. This corresponds to Freud’s “dictatorship of reason”, which is able to control the aggression drive and prevent wars. Both rely on the pacifying effect of culture for this stage. The history of Freud’s impact is centered on the dissemination of psychoanalysis as therapy and in related therapy forms, i.e. in the field of clinical psychology and less in his theoretical designs. The death drive and the Oedipus complex have been criticized early on, other theory elements are still in discussion. Nevertheless, his approach has changed thinking. Terms such as “repression” or the so-called “Freudian slip” have become common knowledge just as the “Oedipus complex“.

3 The Moral Development of the Child (Piaget/Kohlberg) “In the case of the simplest social games […] we are dealing with rules that the children have worked out on their own. […] If we now go to the awareness of the rule, we find an even more unclear progress in the individual, which is clear in the broad strokes, however. We can express it in the form of three stages […]. During the first stage, the rule is not yet binding, either because it is only motoric or—initial stage of egocentrism—because it is absorbed unconsciously as an interesting example and not as a binding reality. During the second stage (peak of egocentrism and first half of the stage of cooperation), the rule is seen as holy and inviolable, it owes its origin to the adults and has eternal validity; any proposed change appears to the child as a violation. Finally, during the third stage, the rule is seen as a law based on mutual agreement, which one is obliged to observe if one wants to be honest, but which one can shape at will, provided that one receives the general consent for it. […] The collective rule is first something that exists outside the

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individual and is therefore holy, then it gradually becomes internalized and appears to the same extent as the freely created product of mutual agreement and autonomous consciousness.” (Jean Piaget: The moral judgment of the child. Frankfurt a. M. 1973, 8 and 23 f.). Jean Piaget is born in 1896 in Neuchatel/Switzerland. There he studies biology and completes his studies in 1918 with a PhD. Between 1926 and 1954 he is professor of psychology in Neuchatel, Geneva and Lausanne. From 1932 he heads the Institut J.-J. Rousseau at the University of Geneva. His marriage in 1924 produced three children, the development of which Piaget studied with scientific interest. This context includes, among other things, his work La représentation du monde chez l’enfant (The child’s view of the world) published in 1926 and his work Le jugement moral chez l’enfant (The child’s moral judgment) from 1932. The focus of his work is in the field of developmental psychology and a general genetic epistemology (cf. Piaget 1981). This includes work such as La naissance de l’intelligence chez l’enfance (1936) and La formation du symbole chez l’enfant (1945). In 1955 he founded the Centre International d’Épistemologie Génétique in Geneva, which became a meeting place for international, interdisciplinary researchers (cf. Scharlau 2007, 19). Piaget died in 1980 in Geneva (cf. Piaget 1981, 91; Scharlau 2007). With his research, Piaget follows the new perspective on the child opened up by Rousseau (see Chap. VIII, 1). The child is no longer ‘the little adult’, to whom no special attention is paid, but a living being with its own experience, its own feeling, its own thinking and its own moral judgment. The new perspective on the child is not only associated with a scientific interest, but with a historically significant respect for the child’s own nature. This is reflected in Piaget’s work in the extensive and patient field research, in which, often supported by his collaborator Bärbel Inhelder (cf. ebd., 21), he, for example, investigated the games of children in their regional and linguistic variants has examined. An important result of this research is the recognition that children experience the world in a different way than adults, that they have their own “view of the world”, which adapts to that of adults over various, characteristic stages. In his book The child’s view of the world he distinguishes three. They are: 1) “The child’s realism”, 2) “The child’s animism” and 3) “The child’s artificialism and the later stages of causality”. A basic characteristic of a child’s experience of the world is a specific realism which must not be confused with “objectivity”, where a distinction is

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made between the self and the objects. The child’s realism “consists rather in the fact that one does not know that there is a self, and therefore considers one’s own perspective to be immediately objective and absolute. Realism; that is the anthropocentric illusion, that is finalism” (Piaget 1997, 43). The child is determined by an all-encompassing “innate egocentrism” (ibid.). This means that the world is not experienced through the process of distinguishing thought, but through the alternation of feelings, in which feeling and the felt are an undifferentiated unity (cf. ibid., 47). The child projects his own feelings into the things. Piaget gives the following example: “The child who feels fear of fire, for example, attributes threatening intentions to that fire” (ibid., 45). The example makes it clear that the child attributes consciousness and intentions to things. This attribution is characteristic of animism. However, animism goes through various stages. In the first stage, everything is endowed with consciousness, in the second stage it is all movable objects, in the third stage the bodies endowed with self-movement, such as “the wind” (ibid., 169), until in the fourth stage it finally remains “reserved for animals” (ibid., 171). The thought that things obey a moral necessity is casually connected with animism. Piaget remarks on this: “Until the age of 7 or 8, children are not willing to accept that things can do what they want, not because these things have no will, but because their will is subject to a moral law, the principle of which could be expressed as ‘everything for the higher good of man’” (ibid., 201 f.). Only from this age on “is a physical determinism first visible” (ibid., 202). The third aspect of the child’s world view is determined by “artificialism“, i.e. by the thought that everything is “made”, animate as well as inanimate things. The small child, who is convinced of the omnipotence of his parents, attributes the “manufacture” of things to them. Only rarely is God brought into play and then only as a “worker” (cf. ibid., 309). Artificialism and animism are not opposed to each other for children, because both are based on the idea of “intentionalism”. Things are “made for …” (ibid., 311). They fulfill a task in the service of man. “The child’s intentionalism is based on the implicit postulate that everything in nature has a reason for being in the form of an officium, a duty or task that each body has to fulfill according to its particular properties” (ibid., 312). Artificialism dissolves when children “around the age of six” (ibid., 332) question their parents’ omnipotence in a crisis phase of their thinking and then, guided by religious education, transfer it to God (cf. ibid.). Piaget chooses as a starting point for his empirically based research into the development of moral judgment observations of children playing.

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Although the child “receives the moral rules that it learns to follow mostly from adults” (Piaget 1973, 7), the rules that apply in the games developed by the children themselves form an exception. Piaget notes: “Children’s games are wonderful social institutions. For example, the marbles game of the boys contains a system of manifold game rules; a complete legal code and a whole jurisprudence. Only the psychologist who, for professional reasons, has to become familiar with this customary law in order to deduce its implicit morality, can see the wealth of these rules from the trouble that the mastery of their details causes him” (ibid.). The study of these rules is therefore so important because in them the principle of morality itself appears. Piaget emphasizes: “Every morality is a system of rules, and the essence of every morality lies in the respect that the individual feels for these rules” (ibid.). This is true—according to Piaget—for Kant’s ethics as well as for Durkheim’s sociology. In his research on children’s morality, Piaget discovers a system of three developmental stages that follow one another, overlap and transform. It is first: “the motor rule, which corresponds to the preverbal motor intelligence, and is relatively independent of any social relationship”, secondly: “the compulsion rule based on one-sided respect” and thirdly: “the reason rule based on mutual respect” (ibid., 93). The formation of motor rules can only be understood against the background that man is generally interested in behaviour that conforms to rules. This already crystallizes into habit in infancy. Piaget notes: “In its beginnings, the motor rule coincides with habit. The way to take the breast, to put the head on the pillow, etc. crystallizes into commanding habits already during the first months” (ibid.). In the development of such rules, the child’s spontaneous striving to establish itself in the world becomes apparent. Education should take this into account and respect the child’s character thus formed. This means “getting a child used to the fact that it has to cope with itself, or calming it down by rocking it back and forth, forms the starting point for a good or bad character” (ibid.). The motor rule arises from invention, repetition and practice. These form the basis for the “ritualization of motor adaptation schemata”. The marble game, which the two- to three-year-old child discovers for itself, arises from a “need for practice, which takes into account the special nature of the handled object” (ibid.). This includes the fact that the child collects the marbles, makes a “nest”, prevents them from rolling away, etc. Through adaptation of behaviour to the structure of objects and through creative change of the given conditions, a motor intelligence develops. The rulebook developed in this way therefore takes into account the physical conditions. However, in

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order to obtain a binding, i.e. moral character, it is necessary that the child transcends its situation as an individual to the “social”. With the social, the second stage is reached. Once again, the marble game provides an enlightening example. With the social, the spontaneously developed, varied and modified rules become compulsory rules. However, it is noteworthy that these rules are by no means imposed on the individual against his will. The assumption of the binding character of rules meets with prepared ground in him. Piaget remarks: “By the age of 3 or 4, the child is saturated with the rules of adults. His world is dominated by the idea that things are as they should be, the actions of each individual correspond to laws which are both moral and physical, in short, there is a universal order” (ibid., 96). In this situation, the child is ready to accept the rules of the marble game, which are observed by older children, without question. The rules of the game become part of the “universal order” to which the child is subjected and to which it feels obliged. As long as it is itself anchored in egocentrism, it is also not able to oppose, i.e. its ego, this order and distance itself from it. For the child it is not only binding, but holy. It is given the character of “transcendence”. Piaget goes one step further. He says: “There is no mysticism without transcendence. Conversely, there is no transcendence without a certain egocentrism. Perhaps the origin of this fact lies in the unique situation of the small child in relation to the adults in its environment. The doctrine of the origin of religious feeling from the child’s relationship appears particularly convincing to us in this respect” (ibid., 101). The third stage of morality is reached when the principle of cooperation and reciprocity takes the place of the one-sided respect for the given rules of force. This happens, for example, when children agree on new rules in their games. This means: “You can change the rule, provided you agree on it, because a rule is valid on the basis of agreement and reciprocity, not on the basis of tradition” (ibid., 102). But not only the rules thus acquire a new character, also the self-conception of the child changes; because “the more cooperation takes the place of force, the more the child differentiates his I from the thinking of the other” (ibid., 103). The child frees himself from his egocentric perspective and becomes a “personality” (ibid., 103). With the principle of cooperation and the “mutual respect” a stage of morality is reached, to which the 12 to 14 year old child has access. However, it is not fully realized by him or by adults. It remains an ideal. In addition, it still allows for cooperation in criminal acts. In order to exclude this, it is necessary to morally qualify the type of cooperation. Piaget does this by distinguishing between “constituted” and “constituting” rules. The constituted ones are based on mere agreement, the constituting ones,

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on the other hand, are those which enable cooperation and reciprocity in the first place. They include, for example, “justice” (ibid., 106). Cooperation is therefore only moral if it is based on the principle of justice. Finally, Piaget points out that for the child at the third stage of morality an element of the first stage acquires a new meaning. It is the moment of the creative. Piaget remarks: “Creation is free to him, but under the condition that he submits to the norms of reciprocity. His motor I is identical with the social I. Harmony is established by the unity of reason and nature, while the moral compulsion and the one-sided respect set a supernatural and mystical nature against rational experience” (ibid., 108). The sequence of stages therefore has a dialectical structure. The first stage has the form of the ‘thesis’: It is the stage of natural freedom, on which the rules are chosen and invented spontaneously. The second stage represents the ‘antithesis’: It is determined by the negation of freedom and the submission to a system of social “compulsion-rules”. The third stage represents the ‘synthesis’: On it, freely agreed rules based on reciprocity and justice come about. For Piaget’s history of effect, the American psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg (1927–1987) has a special importance. As early as his dissertation with a topic on the child’s moral development, he dealt with Piaget. The research of the child’s moral development becomes his life’s work, to which he devoted himself from 1955 until his death (cf. Garz 2015, 52). The three-stage schema developed by Piaget becomes the basis of his work. For him, too, there is a first stage of moral development characterized by egocentrism, a second stage oriented towards the conventions and norms of society, and finally a third stage oriented towards general ethical principles. Like Piaget, he argues that these stages are traversed in this order and, like Piaget, he believes that they have universal validity, i.e. they are not culturally relative. In order to substantiate this, he not only carried out field research in different social classes, but also in different countries—for example in Israel, Turkey and Taiwan. To prove the thesis that there are not only different levels of moral judgment in children, but that a child actually goes through these levels during his development, he carried out a comprehensive longitudinal study in which he interviewed the same children at intervals of about four years over a period of more than twenty years. In 1955/56, 72 boys aged ten, thirteen and sixteen were initially selected from a suburb of Chicago, twelve delinquent adolescents and twelve more adolescents in 1964 (cf. ibid., 53). An important result of his research was that Piaget’s scheme proved to be reliable, but had to be further differentiated. He calls each of the three stages level, each of which comprises two stages. Kohlberg has modified his stage

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schema over time, but not in its basic structure. The one he designed in 1968 is particularly concise. It has the following structure (Kohlberg 1996, 26): Level: Stage 1 Stage 2 Level: Stage 3

Stage 4 Level: Stage 5 Stage 6

I Pre-moral Orientation to punishment and obedience Naive instrumental hedonism II Morality of conventional role conformity Morality of the good child (“Good-boy morality”), which maintains good relationships and seeks the recognition of others Morality of maintaining authority III Morality of self-accepted moral principles Morality of the contract, individual rights and the democratically recognized law/legal system Morality of individual conscience principles

Kohlberg explains and modifies his model in 1969, in which he renames the levels, namely with the expressions “Preconventional Level”, “Conventional Level” and “Postconventional, autonomous or principle-oriented Level”—as follows (cf. ibid., 51 ff.): Level I: The child interprets the concepts of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ or ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ according to their “material consequences or hedonistic consequences”. Punishment and reward are the decisive factors. Stage 1: “Orientation to punishment and obedience”. The child tries to avoid punishment and submits to the power “for its own sake”. He does not yet have the idea of an order underlying this power. Stage 2: “Instrumental”-relative orientation. An action is right that guarantees the satisfaction of one’s own needs. “Human relationships are comparable to business transactions. Ideas of fairness, reciprocity and equal distribution are present in approaches, but are always interpreted materially-pragmatically.” The principle applies: “As you do to me, so I do to you.” Level II: Actions are now considered valuable if they “correspond to the expectations of one’s own family, group or nation”. It is not only about the principle of conforming behaviour with regard to the given social order, but rather about the principle of loyalty, i.e. the endeavour “to maintain, support, justify this order and to identify with the corresponding persons or the group”. Stage 3: “Orientation to interpersonal harmony or to the image of the ‘good boy ’ or the ‘nice girl ’”. What is generally accepted is referred to as a good, “natural” behaviour. What is new is that an action is no longer judged according to its material consequences, but “according to the underlying intention”.

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Stage 4: “Orientation to law and order”. The preservation of authority and order is at the centre of moral judgments. “Right behaviour consists in doing one’s duty, showing respect for authority and preserving the existing social order for its own sake” (ibid.). Level III: Moral values and norms are now developed independently of the principles represented in society. The identification with the prevailing group morality dissolves. Stage 5: “Legalistic social contract” orientation. An action is then judged to be right if it takes into account “general individual rights” and the legal standards agreed upon by society. Utilitarian considerations also play a role. The legal order is considered changeable according to “rational social utility considerations”, it has no absolute validity. A clear distinction is made between one’s own, personal values and those of the political community. Stage 6: “Orientation to universal ethical principles”. The center of this stage are “conscience decisions” that are determined in “accordance with self-chosen ethical principles ”. These should be “logically comprehensive, universal and consistent”. These are “abstract, moral-philosophical principles” such as the “Golden Rule” or the “Categorical Imperative” and not concrete rules such as the “Ten Commandments”. “In the center are the universal principles of justice, reciprocity and equality of human rights as well as the respect for the dignity of human beings as individual persons ” (ibid., 53). Kohlberg emphasizes that his model of moral development claims its own theoretical status. The moral judgments of children may not be understood as the internalization of norms imparted to them by the environment, as Durkheim and Freud do (cf. ibid., 19), nor “as the immediate unfolding of biological or neurological structures” (ibid., 31). Rather, it is to be assumed that—analogous to the physical world—there are “some universal structural dimensions or invariants in the social world” (ibid., 32). However, if the moral judgments of children are not created by direct influence of other people, they are also not created detached from them. This means: The “moral stages are primarily to be understood as the result of the interaction of the child with others” (ibid., 31). The others “do not so much bring about a certain value system, but they stimulate the development of moral judgment” (ibid., 34). Although all children go through the stages in the given order, not all of them do so at the same pace. Therefore, Kohlberg also avoids assigning fixed age limits to the stages. In addition, not all respondents reach level III and hardly anyone the stage six. The only thing that has been empirically confirmed is that there is a positive relationship “between the development of moral judgment and

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cognitive progress on intelligence tests” (ibid., 33). The reverse is not true. This does not mean that progress in cognitive development automatically leads to progress in moral judgments. There can be discrepancies between the two. Kohlberg notes: “All morally advanced children are smart, but not all smart children are morally advanced” (ibid.). However, it is noteworthy that there is a positive relationship between the level of moral judgment and actual behavior. This could be shown in a corresponding experiment. “Thus, 75% of the persons oriented towards moral principles refused to administer increasingly strong electric shocks to a supposed victim in an experiment at the behest of a scientist, while only 13% of the other participants in the experiment resisted this instruction” (ibid., 16). Darwin, Freud, Piaget and Kohlberg agree that morality develops in a sense that can be interpreted evolutionarily or developmentally. They distinguish three stages, or levels, which are partly—as in Kohlberg’s case— subdivided. The dialectical structure of the sequence of stages of moral development can also be found in the other authors. The first stage has a natural immediacy. These are selfish, but also social instincts; the pleasure principle; natural, creative freedom and naive hedonism. The second stage is its negation. In it, the claim of society comes into force: represented by conscience; the super-ego; compulsion rules and role conformity. The third stage is a synthesis. It mediates individual, natural needs with the recognition of universal ethical principles. Schematically, the concept of the stages of morality of the mentioned authors can be represented as follows: Stage

Darwin

Freud

Piaget

Kohlberg

I

Selfishness and “social instincts” “Conscience”/ common good

“Pleasure principle” Hedonism

Egoism natural freedom

“Super-ego”/ “conscience”

Social “coercive rules”

“Idea of humanity”

“Reality principle”/“dictatorship of reason”

Principles of justice and reciprocity

Punishment and obedience naive Hedonism “Conventional role conformity” Universal ethical principles

II

III

Kohlberg’s influence can be seen not only in developmental psychology and pedagogy, but also in philosophy. Habermas explicitly refers to him in his discourse ethics. He believes that both concepts are based on common philosophical premises: cognitivism, universalism, and formalism (cf. Habermas 1983, 130). He says: In the theory developed by Kohlberg, “the discourse ethics can recognize itself in its essential features” (ibid., 128).

VIII Education and Cultural Training— Pedagogical Ethics

In his work On Education, published in 1803, Kant remarks: “Man is the only creature that must be educated” (Kant VI, 697). This statement is of particular importance. It contains an anthropological, a pedagogical and an ethical dimension. It is anthropologically significant because, due to his reduction of instincts at birth, man has no natural, fixed behaviour. He must learn his way of life in the confrontation with the environment. This usually happens in contact with his closest reference persons. They have the task of helping the child to orientate himself in the world and to lead an independent life. This specific help is the subject of education. However, the history of education shows a variety of different approaches. Which of them can be justified? The criterion for answering this question can only be sought in the field of ethics. For centuries, a method was predominant in many educational concepts that aimed at an early and smooth adaptation of the child to the world of adults. The child had to obey, i.e. to submit to the will of the adult. The means to achieve this were rewards and punishment, with punishments predominating in most cases. Meanwhile, this approach is referred to as ‘black pedagogy’ (cf. Rutschky 1980). An education that meets the universal requirements of ethics must distance itself from this. It must bring the child the respect that is due to him as a human being from the very beginning. A pedagogical ethics is meaningful and necessary because every education must be measured against its own, often insufficiently reflected, ethical standards. The authors treated below are characterized by the fact that they are particularly committed to the claim of a universal ethics. The beginning is made © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer-Verlag GmbH, DE, part of Springer Nature 2023 W. Pleger, The Good Life, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-05969-7_9

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by Rousseau, who, with his educational novel Emile, has rediscovered childhood in a revolutionary way by emphasizing the child’s right to self-determination. The starting point of his considerations is his criticism of society. He emphasizes that, despite all scientific and technical progress, society is corrupt in its moral-practical foundations. In its striving for “perfectibility”, it has moved away from its natural origin. Rousseau knows that society cannot be brought back as a whole into a state corresponding to natural law, but he sees in every child the chance to strive for a perfection corresponding to the ideal of humanity through an education in accordance with nature. For Wilhelm von Humboldt the concepts of individuality and education are at the center of his pedagogical, political and ethical thinking. The goal is to give every person the opportunity to develop the individual potentialities and forces within himself in confrontation with the world in a way that is appropriate to him. This concept also formed the background for his fundamental reform of the school system and the founding of the University of Berlin. Maria Montessori finally builds on Rousseau’s thoughts in many respects. She criticizes that the self-determination of the child has been neglected for too long and substantiates this with historical examples. She claims that the lives of people, not only the lives of adults, but also the lives of children, are determined by work. The work of adults consists in the production of the external goods necessary for life, but that of children in the education of people themselves. The work material developed by her is supposed to offer the child the opportunity to develop in a child-appropriate way, but at the same time to work out the future of humanity in this way. Her pedagogical ethics are connected with the fight for the rights of the child.

1 Principles of a Natural Education (Rousseau) “In the social order, all places are marked; everyone must be educated for his place. If someone leaves his place, he is of no use anymore. Education is only useful to the extent that the vocation agrees with the parents’ choice of profession. […] In the natural order, all people are equal; their common vocation is: to be human. Whoever is well educated for this can do any profession that is related to it. Whether my pupil will be a soldier, a priest or a lawyer is all the same to me. Before the parents’ choice of profession, nature determines him

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to be a human being. Life is a profession that I want to teach him. I admit that when he leaves my hands, he will neither be a lawyer nor a soldier nor a priest, but first and foremost a human being. Everything that a human being has to be, he will be exactly the same as everyone else; and if fate forces him to change his place, he will always be in his place.” (Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Emil or On Education. Paderborn 1998, 14). Jean-Jacques Rousseau is born in Geneva in 1712 as the son of a watchmaker. His mother dies a few days after his birth from childbed fever. He spends a restless youth without a regular education. In Annecy he meets Madame de Warens, who leads him to convert to the Catholic faith. In 1742 he goes to Paris, where he becomes a tutor and music copyist. There he also meets Diderot and writes articles on music for the Encyclopédie. In 1750 he receives the prize of the Academy in Dijon with his Discours sur les sciences et les arts (Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts), which makes him famous overnight. In 1754 he travels to Geneva and returns to Protestantism. In 1755 his Discours sur l’origine et les fondements de l’inegalité parmi les hommes (Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality among Men) appears in Amsterdam. In 1762 his two central works appear: his educational novel Emile ou de l’éducation (Emile or On Education) and his state-theoretical and political program Du contrat social, ou Principes du droit politique (On the Social Contract). The parliament in Paris confiscates and condemns the Emile and issues an arrest warrant against the author, who then flees to Switzerland. But the authorities in Geneva also condemn and burn both works. Rousseau flees to Neuchâtel and finally receives asylum from Governor Lord Keith, who offers him a home in the Jura mountain village of Môtier. In 1763 he becomes a citizen of the principality of Neuchatel, which belongs to Prussia. He renounces his citizenship of the Republic of Geneva. In 1766 he travels to England in the company of Hume. After their quarrel he returns to Paris, where in 1770 he completes his autobiographical work Confessions, which is published posthumously. In 1776 he writes his last, also autobiographical work, Rêveries du promeneur solitaire (Dreams of the Solitary Walker). After a stroke on 2 June 1778 he dies in Ermenonville. In 1794 his coffin is carried by the actors of the French Revolution to the Paris Pantheon (cf. Holmsten 1983; Taureck 2009). Rousseau is a leading representative of the eighteenth century, which is understood as the Age of Enlightenment. In French, he is known as ‘le siècle philosophique’ or ‘l’âge de la raison’. His message is as follows: it is

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important to leave behind the “centuries of barbarism and darkness” in order to achieve the “humanization, enlightenment, and beautification of bourgeois and social life” (HWP 1. 621). This should be the age of reason. However, it was already introduced by the seventeenth century, in which not only the new heliocentric world view prevailed, but also the philosophy of the autonomous subject initiated by Descartes and the development of modern natural sciences with the corresponding technology. The orientation towards reason therefore includes both theoretical-scientific and technical-artistic as well as moral-practical aspects. In contrast to the thinking of the Middle Ages, in which the scholastic method oriented towards the Bible prevailed, experience and reason are now the new principles of thinking and acting. This applies to the 17th as well as to the 18th century, which now associates reason with the light metaphor of enlightenment, in French ‘les lumières’. Rousseau is undoubtedly a thinker of the Enlightenment, but he tries to bring forward his own very idiosyncratic concept of enlightenment, which contradicts certain currents of his time. It is directed against the one-sided emphasis on the theoretical-scientific and the technical-artistic orientation of thinking and against the assumption that this alone could improve the situation of people in moral-practical terms. Nowhere has he expressed his protest against this illusion more clearly than in his prize-winning answer to the question posed by the Academy of Dijon: Whether the restoration of the sciences and arts has contributed to the purification of morals (cf. Rousseau 1995, p. 27). Contrary to the prevailing opinions of his time, which assumed a general, but above all a moral progress of society in the wake of the rapidly developing sciences and arts, Rousseau does not see this progress. With extraordinary sharpness, he characterizes the moral state of society of his time as follows: “There are no more sincere friendships, no real respect, no firm trust. Suspicion, mistrust, fear, coldness, reserve, hatred and slander will forever hide under this uniform and deceptive veil of politeness, this praised finesse of manners, which we owe to the enlightenment of our century” (ibid., 36). But he goes one step further. This catastrophic moral state of society not only stands in sharp contrast to the progress of the sciences and arts, but is rather caused by it, because, in his devastating judgment, “our souls are corrupted to the same extent as our sciences and arts have become perfect” (ibid., 37). Sciences and arts, as they appear in his time, alienate man from nature and his natural feelings. But the subtleties of “jurisprudence” are also superfluous for him who “knows nothing but the duties of a man and the needs of nature” (ibid., 45). The same applies to the field of

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pedagogy. Rousseau notes: “From our childhood on, an unreasonable education adorns our mind and spoils our judgment” (ibid., 52). The consequence is: The children “will not be able to distinguish error from truth, and yet they will have the art to make them unrecognizable by others through subtle false reasons. But it will be quite unknown to them what the words magnanimity, fairness, moderation, humaneness and courage mean” (ibid., 53). Nevertheless, Rousseau does not generally condemn sciences and arts, but only their present forms, which, as explained, have their origin in the corruption of human nature and are of no use for the successful coexistence of people. But there are also other, individual scholars, such as Bacon von Verulam, Descartes and Newton, who, unaffected by the aforementioned human weaknesses, feel obliged to knowledge and scientific truth. They are granted a privilege by the community. Rousseau says about them: “If one wanted to allow some people to devote themselves to the sciences and arts, it should only be those who feel strong enough to go alone on their tracks and continue them: only these few have the right to erect monuments to the human mind for the glory of mankind” (ibid., 58). In his second essay on the also posed by the Academy of Dijon question: What is the origin of inequality among people, and whether it is authorized by natural law (Rousseau 1984, 65) Rousseau attempts to trace the historical development of an originally good natural state of man to the current corrupt state of society. Originally, so Rousseau, the people lived in family groups and small groups. They had to assert themselves primarily against the wild animals that they surpass in strength. But man, who in contrast to the animal does not have his own instinct, is nevertheless able to acquire all instincts. Consequently, he finds his livelihood easier than any of the animals can (cf.. Ibid., 81). In place of the natural instinct the freedom of man comes into play. This means that “in the operations of the animal nature does everything alone, whereas man participates in his as a free agent (ibid., 99).” With freedom comes “the ability to perfect oneself; […] one’s perfectibility ” (ibid., 103). It must be admitted that it is this (perfectibility) wich draws man “from this original state in which he would spend peaceful and innocent days; that it is this (perfectibility)  wich  makes him the tyrant of himself and of nature in the end by bringing his insights and his errors, his vices and his virtues to bloom with the centuries” (ibid., 105). With perfectibility reason and understanding develop, but they are in the service of his passions. “We only seek to recognize because we desire to enjoy; and it is impossible to understand why one who had neither desire nor concerns should take the trouble to think” (ibid., 107). However, it is precisely these specifically human features, such as freedom,

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perfectibility, reason, understanding and reflection, which alienate man from nature. He becomes increasingly estranged from her by developing new needs and increasingly sophisticated means to satisfy them. But with them grow also dissatisfaction and suffering. Rousseau emphasizes that “the majority of our sufferings are our own work and that we could have avoided almost all of them if we had maintained the simple, uniform and solitary way of life that was prescribed to us by nature.” If nature has destined us to be healthy, I almost dare to assert that the state of reflection is a state against nature and that man, who reflects, is a depraved animal (ibid., 89). The decisive point, however, which marks the transition of the natural man to the present corrupt state of society, is reached through the formation of private property. Rousseau describes this fatal transition as follows: “The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said ‘This is mine’ and found people simple enough to believe him, was the true founder of civil society. How many crimes, wars, murders, how much misery and horror the human race would have been spared if someone had pulled up the stakes or filled in the ditch and shouted to his fellow men: ‘Beware of listening to this impostor. You are lost if you forget that the fruits of the earth belong to all and the earth to no one’” (ibid., 173). However, with the formation of private property, not only a competition between owners and envy, fraud and malice arose, but also the ever-increasing gap between poverty and wealth, including the enslavement of the poor by the rich (cf. ibid., 197). But Rousseau is under no illusions. The former good state of nature is irretrievably lost. The present state of society, although created by acts of injustice, has created its own form of legitimacy through the development of a legal system. As a result, “the inequality that is almost null in the state of nature derives its power and its growth from the development of our abilities and the progress of the human mind, and finally becomes permanent and legitimate through the establishment of property and laws” (ibid., 271). With regard to the price question, this also means “that the moral inequality, which is only authorized by positive law, is contrary to natural law” (ibid.). This violation of natural law has led—and with these words Rousseau concludes his treatise—“that a handful of people are overloaded with superfluous while the starving multitude suffers from the lack of the most necessary” (ibid., 271 ff.). Rousseau is convinced that the society of his time contradicts natural law to an unacceptable extent. This creates the perspective of a social state that, taking into account human freedom, comes as close as possible to the claim of natural law. With this thought, the framework is set within which Rousseau’s further pedagogical and political considerations will move.

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This is already true for his educational novel Emile. However, the following often quoted fact must not be left unmentioned in this context: Rousseau did not educate his five children, who were born from his relationship with Thérèse Levasseur, a Parisian laundress, himself, but rather abandoned them in the foundling home, a practice that was by no means unusual at that time. Nevertheless, it was an omission that he first tried to excuse (cf. Rousseau 1985, 581) and later deeply regretted (cf. Holmsten 1983, 62 f.). However, he acquires pedagogical experience during his time as a tutor in Lyon from 1740 and there he also designs a first Project for Education (Projet pour l’éducation) for his pupil. In his Emile this project expands to a comprehensive educational design, which in its literary implementation takes on a form that at the same time has features of a novel, a thought experiment and a utopia. The question motivating him is: How must the principles of a naturally based education be determined under the condition that the newly born child only has its natural forces at its disposal and is to have the chance to develop these, without the existing society suppressing, hindering or directing this development in a certain direction? Rousseau’s answer is: The child must be given the opportunity to learn “to be a human being” in a space of freedom set up, supervised and guaranteed by a wise educator, far from the harmful influences of society (see quotation). The revolutionary newness of Rousseau’s pedagogical ethics becomes clear at this point. It is an ethics in which anthropology and pedagogy form a unit. The standard for both is the idea of “humanity” (Rousseau 1998, 224 f.). This is also accompanied by a new view of the child. The child is no longer the ‘little adult’ who is to be brought to take on the role assigned to him by his parents in the world of adults in the shortest possible time through a fixed set of measures. Rousseau perceives the child as an autonomous being who is to be enabled by education to choose and work out its position in society itself (see quotation). The task of the educator is only to create the appropriate framework conditions for this process. Rousseau begins his considerations with two shortcomings of infant care in his time. One is to wrap the child tightly: “‘As soon as the child is born, as soon as it can stretch and move its limbs freely, it is fettered again. It is wrapped and laid down with an immovable head and outstretched legs, the arms laid against the body. It is swaddled and swathed so that it can no longer move […]’” (Rousseau 1998, 16). The early ‘confinement’ and ‘fettering’ of children as well as the accompanying suppression of free movements are a symbol of the social constraint to which the child is exposed from an early age.

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The second bad habit concerns the “unnatural custom” of many mothers to no longer breastfeed their own children, but to entrust this to a wet nurse for money. Rousseau notes: “Since mothers, neglectful of their duty, no longer want to breastfeed their own children, they have to entrust them to greedy women. These naturally make no effort, since they do not feel the natural instinct of a mother for the children of others” (ibid., 17). In order to keep their work with these children to a minimum, they are all too happy to take on the practice of swaddling, because “an unswaddled child would have to be watched constantly; a swaddled child is thrown into the corner and ignored when it cries. […] Do these sweet mothers, childless and carefree, enjoy themselves in the city without knowing how their swaddled child is treated in the village? At the slightest disturbance, the wet nurse hangs the child like a bundle of laundry on a hook and goes about her business calmly, while the poor little worm hangs there like on the cross” (ibid.). The disturbed relationship to the child and to childhood finally manifests itself in an increasing childlessness. Women who do not breastfeed their children finally “do not want any more at all, which is a natural consequence. As soon as motherhood is experienced as a burden, one finds the means to get rid of it. One wants a childless marriage in which one can enjoy undisturbed. The attraction turns against the genus instead of serving its reproduction. These and other causes of depopulation show us the future fate of Europe” (ibid., 18). After these critical remarks, Rousseau turns to the principles of a natural education (cf. Rang 1965, 362). He points out how endangered the child is, especially in its first years of life: “Half of the children die before the age of eight” (Rousseau 1998, 21). But this sad fact is not a reason for him to want to protect the child from everything and “keep every pain away from him” (ibid., 20). On the contrary: it is much more important to harden the child in the right way. Nature shows us how to do this. “Observe nature and follow the path she shows you! She constantly exercises her children; she hardens them through trials of all kinds; she teaches them from an early age what pain and suffering are. Teething makes them feverish, stomach aches lead to cramps; coughing makes them almost suffocate; worms torment them […]. But if the child has survived these trials, its strength has grown, and as soon as it can use its life, life itself is better secured” (ibid., 20 f.). For the development of his concept of a natural education, Rousseau makes use of a fiction. He imagines an imaginary pupil (“élève imaginaire”), who is by no means particularly gifted, but a “mediocre mind”, because only “the average needs education” (ibid., 26). He calls him Emil. However, he leaves the role of the assigned, suitable educator to himself, to whom he

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generously attributes all “qualities of a good educator” (ibid., 25). Emil is an orphan, so that the imaginary educator is the main reference person for a period of about 25 years, except for a wet nurse during the time as a baby. He is both educator and teacher in one person. The education of the child begins at birth. “The first impressions of children are pure sensations: they only perceive pleasure and pain” (ibid., 39). From the reactions to recurring impressions, first habits arise, which are usually supported by their environment. But precisely these are to be avoided; because they overlay the natural needs. Therefore the maxim applies: “The only habit a child may adopt is the habit of not adopting any” (ibid.). A child who always follows his habits will eventually become their slave. This results in the recommendation: “Prepare it from the beginning for the state of its freedom and for the use of its powers” (ibid.). It is a matter of enabling the child to “always be master of itself and to act in everything according to its will, as soon as it has one” (ibid.). The following principles apply to a natural education: “Children have no surplus powers. They don’t even have enough power for everything that nature requires of them. So you have to let them use all the powers that nature gives them and that they can’t misuse anyway. First principle. /You have to help them and assist them in everything that they lack in insight or strength in what belongs to their physical needs. Second principle. /In the help you grant them, you must restrict yourself to what is really useful, without allowing your mood or unreasonable wishes to be granted. […] Third principle. /You must study their language and their signs carefully, so that you can distinguish in an age when they can’t pretend yet, whether their wishes arise directly from nature or from their own good judgement. Fourth principle” (ibid., 45 f.). A leading pedagogical thought of Rousseau consists in an insight which one could call the discovery of childhood without exaggeration. The child is taken seriously in its respective presence in a way as it has not been done in any previous era. This is the revolutionary new aspect of his approach. How much his concept contradicts the at his time still prevailing ‘black pedagogy’ may be shown by a quotation from the work of J.G. Krüger Thoughts on the education of children from the year 1752: “If your son does not want to learn because you want it, if he cries with the intention to defy you, if he causes damage to hurt you, in short, if he sets his head: Then beat him, then let him cry: No, no, Papa, no, no! For such disobedience is just as much a declaration of war against your person” (cf. Rutschky 1980, 170). For Rousseau on the other hand the child is neither a ‘little adult’ burdened with weaknesses, deficiencies or even malice, nor is the present an

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episode of human existence which is to be overcome as fast as possible, but a being which is entitled to its own right at any time. The maxim to take seriously each stage of life in its uniqueness becomes particularly sharp against the background of the high child mortality. Rousseau remarks: “What should one think of that barbaric education which sacrifices the present to an uncertain future, which ties a child with all possible fetters and thereby begins to make it unhappy in order to prepare an alleged happiness for the future which it might never enjoy?” (Rousseau 1998, 55). He combines this pedagogical thought with a general ethical principle. The result is his appeal to humanity: “People, be human, that is your most important task! Be human towards every class, towards every age, towards everyone who wears a human face. What wisdom is there besides this humanity? Love childhood, promote its games, its joys, its lovable nature! […] Why do you want to rob the innocent little ones of the enjoyment of this short and fleeting span and such a valuable good which they cannot misuse?” (ibid.). Of course every good educator knows that life is also oriented towards the future. The special art of education therefore consists in integrating the orientation towards the future into the experience of the present. Three aspects deserve special attention in this context. Firstly, it is the moral education, secondly the social learning and finally, thirdly, to enable the pupil to really “be master of himself ”. But this is only possible if he is also able to provide for himself. Rousseau begins his discussion of the question of moral education, which is also the key to all others, with a criticism of the practice of his time. Morality, according to the prevailing view, is learned by the child on the path of moral instruction. But this path leads to a hopeless circle. The attempt to issue prohibitions and to appeal to the child’s reason cannot succeed because reason can not be presupposed as a moral yardstick in the child. To forbid something with the argument that the forbidden is an injustice, is meaningless for the child who does not yet know the sense of justice. But if punishment is threatened for the case of the infringement of the prohibition, it will do the forbidden secretly and, in the event that it is discovered, lie. The indication that lies are an injustice makes it clear that the educator is now actually moving in a circle. Rousseau has illustrated the circle structure of such “moral instructions” in a vivid way (cf. ibid., 68). The basis of moral and every education are experience and practice. Rousseau explains this approach with two examples. In the first it is about the thought that the educator should neither threaten nor impose penalties. The pupil should rather recognize the negative consequences of his wrong behavior through the natural consequences. It is the principle of negative

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education (cf. Forschner 1977, 187). In a thought experiment, the educator assumes a “difficult to educate child” who “destroys everything he touches”. The first recommendation is to remove all breakable objects from his reach and not to provide replacement for the things that are still destroyed, but to make the child feel the loss. This also applies to destruction with more dramatic consequences. “He breaks the windows in his room: let the wind blow in day and night and don’t worry about his cold, because it’s better that he has a cold than he’s crazy. Never complain about the inconvenience it causes you, but make sure it feels it first” (Rousseau 1998, 80). The second example is about “imparting the concept of property to children” and showing them “how to derive it naturally from the right of first possession through work” (ibid., 80). Rousseau follows the line of thought of Locke, who in his Two Treatises on Government from 1690 put forward the thesis that the original appropriation of nature by man is achieved through their processing. Work creates property (cf. Locke 1977, 216 f.). So Emil also learns the concept of work and respect for it. Raised on the countryside, Emil is made familiar with farm work at an early age. Soon the tutor will be his “gardener’s assistant” (Rousseau 1998, 78 f.). The two plant beans. They water them and take care of them. But one day they notice that all the beans have been pulled out. The gardener who did it is not at all sorry, but makes serious accusations against the two of them himself. He had just sown melon seeds on the ground, “which my father has cleared”, which are now destroyed. In addition, he makes them aware that there is hardly any “unused land” left. So the only option left for the two is to apologize. But how can the pupil form property if the ground he wants to cultivate already belongs to others? There Jean-Jacques, the tutor, has a suggestion: Maybe the gardener will give them “a corner of his garden to cultivate, if we give him half of the yield?” (ibid., 79). Jean-Jacques and Emil will be his tenants. The gardener agrees to this. In this way, Emil has learned essential aspects of a natural and natural law-related way of life through experience and practice: the ability to provide for his livelihood and, thus, to take care of his future as well as the present, to recognize the connection between work and property, to respect the existing legal relationships and to test a method of coming to a peaceful solution to a conflict with other people through agreement and contract. All of this would not have been possible through mere moral instruction. With the emphasis on experience, work and practice, it is not surprising that these aspects also play a role in the question of choosing the appropriate occupation. This is in line with the criticism of the sciences already contained in the first Discourse.

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The pupil designed by Rousseau has enough wealth and is not forced to work for his living. But the world of the nobility and the rich, to which Emil undoubtedly belongs, is corrupt. But Rousseau wants to promote his pupil in a comprehensive way and “make a man out of him” (ibid., 194). Finally, it must be borne in mind that nobility and wealth can be lost. But what is decisive is that Emil preserves his independence and freedom and his ability to be “master of himself ” at any time. This includes that he can earn his living in an emergency, and this is best achieved if he learns a trade (cf. ibid.). When it comes to the question of which one is the right one, the educator will study the nature of his pupil, his inclinations and preferences. It should be an activity that corresponds to a strong young man. “If you think about it, I would rather Emil liked carpentry. It is clean, useful and can be carried out at home. It keeps the body sufficiently in motion and requires skill and artistic sense. Even if the shapes of the objects are functional, beauty and taste are not excluded” (ibid., 200). Rousseau does not see in the trade a mindless, only physical activity, but the necessary supplement to the onesided emphasis on intellectual abilities. Therefore, he emphasizes: “The great secret of education is that physical education and intellectual work serve each other to relax” (ibid., 202). Emil’s religious education only begins very late. Rousseau notes: “It may surprise you that I let the first years of my pupil pass without talking to him about religion. At fifteen he still did not know whether he had a soul and perhaps it is still too early at eighteen” (ibid., 266 f.). The usual religious education, which consists in making the children learn the catechism by heart, is, according to Rousseau, completely missed. The child learns dogmas that it does not understand. An example of this is the statement: “You have to believe in God to be saved. This dogma misunderstood in this way is the principle of all bloody intolerance and the cause of all vain teachings that deal the death blow to human reason, because they get used to being fed with words” (ibid., 267). The dogma is unreasonable and leads to intolerance, because in two geographically different places and the prevailing religions there “God” is understood quite differently; in “Mecca” differently than in “Rome”. However, the dogmatic consequences are grave. They lead either to salvation or to damnation. Therefore, Rousseau asks: “Can one assume two such similar situations in order to send one to paradise and the other to hell?” (ibid.). Rousseau therefore decides not to teach Emil in any particular religion. “We neither lead him into one nor into the other, but we enable him to

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choose the one to which the right use of his reason must lead him” (ibid., 270). As an explanation of how such a choice can be made, he cites the Confession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar, a former priest who lost his office because of a transgression against the vow of chastity. This vicar rejects the conflicting revealed religions and thus arrives at the natural religion. The basis is the natural order of the world that is immediately certain to everyone and a corresponding will. He says: “I believe, therefore, that a will moves the world and animates nature” (ibid., 284). This will is to be understood as a “supreme intelligence”. This leads to the second article of faith: “I believe, therefore, that the world is governed by a powerful and wise will. I see it, or rather I feel it, and knowing it is important to me” (ibid., 288). He calls this intelligence “God”. However, the question remains unanswered: “But is this same world eternal or was it created?” (ibid.). The third article of faith deals with the ambivalent situation of man. Man is free in his will and in his actions, but influenced by his passions, because he does not always have the strength to do what he wants. Nevertheless, the instinct-free free will is the guarantee for the existence of the human soul. This means: “Man is therefore free in his actions and as a free being animated by an immaterial substance” (ibid., 293). In the final chapter, Rousseau reports how Emil finds the woman appropriate for him, Sophie. Her education and her personality are explained. With the marriage, the joint participation in social life opens up. The task of the educator has thus come to a natural end. But the question of what kind of society would have to be in order to politically unite its members, but at the same time preserve their natural freedom, is discussed by Rousseau in the Social Contract (cf. Rousseau 1974, 17). His answer to this is a political utopia that has sparked lively debate in the literature (cf. Fetscher 1975). Rousseaus history of reception is extraordinarily rich for all areas of his work, with the exception of his educational writings. In addition to the pedagogues Pestalozzi, Schleiermacher, Herbart and Fröbel, of particular importance are Kant, who not only expressly agrees with Rousseau’s account of the transition of human beings from the state of nature to that of culture (cf. Kant 1998, VI, 93 ff.), but also, with regard to Rousseau’s emphasis on human rights, declares: “Rousseau was quite right” (Kant: AA 20.44; cf. Gerhardt 2002, 96). For the twentieth century, John Dewey and Maria Montessori are representative of many others. In their “pedagogy from the child’s point of view” they received important suggestions from Rousseau.

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2 Individual Education and Political Freedom (W. v. Humboldt) “The true purpose of human beings—not the one that changing inclination, but the one that eternal reason prescribes to them—is the highest and most proportionate development of their powers into a whole. Freedom is the first and essential condition for this development. […] The highest ideal of the coexistence of human beings would be the one in which each one develops only out of itself and for its own sake. […] I maintain […], that true reason can never desire any other state for human beings than one in which not only each individual enjoys the freest possible development out of itself, in its own peculiarity, but also in which physical nature receives no other form from human hands than that which each individual, according to the measure of its needs and inclinations, gives to it arbitrarily, only limited by the boundaries of its strength and rights. From this principle, reason must, in my opinion, never deviate any further than is necessary for its own preservation. Therefore, it must always form the basis of every political system […].” (Wilhelm von Humboldt: Ideen zu einem Versuch, die Gränzen der Wirksamkeit des Staats zu bestimmen (Ideas about an attempt to determine the limits of the effectiveness of the state). Werke in fünf Bänden. Bd. I. Schriften zur Anthropologie und Geschichte. Darmstadt 1969, 64, 67 ff.). Wilhelm von Humboldt is born in Potsdam in 1767; two years later his brother Alexander. In the years 1787 to 1789 he studied in Frankfurt/ Oder and in Göttingen law and other subjects. After his traineeship at the Kammergericht in Berlin he works in 1790 to 1791 in the juridical state service. 1797 to 1801 he lives with his family in Paris and makes trips to Spain and the Basque country. In the years 1802 to 1808 he is Prussian Resident at the Papal Court in Rome. 1809 he is appointed to the Prussian State Council and Director of the Section for Religion and Education in the Ministry of the Interior. He is significantly involved in the reorganization of the school system and the founding of the University in Berlin (today: HumboldtUniversität). 1810 he is appointed Prussian Minister and Ambassador. He exercises this function inter alia at the Congress of Vienna in 1814 and at the peace negotiations in Paris in 1815. 1819 he becomes Prussian Minister for State Affairs in Berlin, but is dismissed at the end of the year because of his reservations about the reactionary Prussian policy. The time from 1820 to his death in 1835 he spends as a private scholar in his castle in Tegel (cf. Berglar 1970; Borsche 1990; Gall 2011; Pleger 2018, 195–203).

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Humboldt’s broad range of thinking, which encompasses the fields of pedagogy, politics, and philosophy, is guided by the principles of individual education and political freedom. The two are mutually dependent. Individual education can only succeed in a space of freedom guaranteed by the state. Humboldt has clearly pointed out this connection. Individuality refers to the character, the peculiarity of the individual. For him, the individual is the single one, which, in contrast to the concept, which always denotes the general, is given in reality. While Hegel, his contemporary, emphasizes that the idea itself represents the determining reality, reality and idea are separated in Humboldt. They form a tense relationship. His interest in the individual is combined with the interest in reality. With his thematization of the principle of individuality, Humboldt goes beyond the philosophical approach of the Enlightenment and turns to that of Romanticism. However, he avoids any one-sidedness and tries to combine impulses from both streams of thought. Thus, his thinking is determined by the principle of mediation. This affects the mediation of the individual with the general and the empirical with the speculative. Although the individual is characterized by the fact that it is given in experience, it nevertheless contains speculative elements in itself. This is evidenced by his definition: The individual is to be understood as a set of forces. The character of the individual, i.e. its individuality, is determined by the predominance of specific forces that tend to develop. The individual therefore represents a teleological unity, the goal of which is the development of the forces inherent in it. In their perfected development, the ideal of humanity, which is to be understood as a harmonious “totality of individuals”, is realized. The development and education of individuality are the guiding principles of Humboldt’s thinking in pedagogical, political and ethical terms (cf. Menze 1965, 104 ff.). They form the center of his pedagogical ethics. However, the speculative content of the principle of individuality is supported by another thought. Although each individual is distinguished by its uniqueness and therefore differs from all others, the associated diversity is again abolished in a higher unity in that “the world is reflected in different individuals” (Humboldt I, 239). Humboldt follows Leibniz’s metaphysics with his thought of individuality. By this metaphysics Humboldt escapes a danger that threatens the thinking of individuality. If, namely, each individual is completely different from all others, there could be no community between individuals. The individual would be completely isolated. On the human level, this would mean that communication between individuals would be just as impossible as the recognition of common standards of action. Only the metaphysical assumption

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of living in a common world and reflecting this in a wealth of variations individually lifts this danger. Even more: The ideal of humanity can only be achieved socially. Although Humboldt himself has accordingly drawn attention to the limits of understanding the other, within these limits there is a wide field of commonalities for him. It is the task of his late philological writings to explore it. The concept of the individual initially has a logical and ontological meaning. It denotes the individual in contrast to the general. An individual is “this stone”, “this leaf ”, “this human”, but also “the man” in contrast to “the woman” in a gender-specific sense, further “the nation”, “the culture”, “the language” etc. At the center of Humboldt’s considerations is the human being in the broadest sense, i.e. the world of man. This includes, in addition to the individuality of man, including his differentiation into man and woman, the field of education, language, state and law. His thinking deals with anthropology in the broadest sense. In his essay Plan of a comparative anthropology from the year 1797 he has “the study of man” (ibid., 337) as his central theme. His anthropology receives a special accent in that it is not important to him to determine the general “species-character of man”, but “only his individual differences” (ibid.). The essential is distinguished from the merely accidental, their causes are investigated and their further development is considered. The importance of comparative anthropology does not arise from a theoretical interest alone. In fact, according to Humboldt, there is no “practical business” in human life that would not be dependent on human knowledge, namely in the knowledge of the individual human being, “as he appears before our eyes”. However, it is not easy to be guided by a concept of the individual, which is neither too narrow nor too wide. While the philosopher tends to develop a too wide concept and to judge the human being only according to his possible abilities, the one who is committed to practical business tends to consider the individual only in his accidental limitations. Avoiding both dangers is the task of comparative anthropology. Humboldt develops his plan with the following words: “In order to know man with accuracy, as he is, and to judge him with freedom, according to what he can develop, the practical sense of observation and the philosophizing spirit must be jointly active. But this connection is considerably facilitated if the knowledge of individual character is raised to an object of scientific reflection in a comparative anthropology” (ibid., 338). The knowledge of individual character is important for every human being, but primarily for the legislator, who must study the character of a nation in order to be able to influence it. When it comes to the ideal of humanity, one must also think

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beyond the scope of the individual nation and consider the relationship of the nations to each other. It turns out that the nations also form a totality of individuals. The decisive thought for Humboldt is that the ideal of humanity can only be realized in the development of the individuals to a totality. The formation of individuality is therefore not only an object of theoretical interest, but of eminent moral-practical importance, both in pedagogical and political terms. This results in the following ethical imperative: “Man should maintain the character he has once received from nature and position, only in him does he move easily, is he active and happy. But he should no less satisfy the general demands of humanity and set no limits whatsoever to his spiritual education. The practical man of human affairs should combine and solve these two conflicting demands at the same time” (ibid., 340 f.). The individuality of the individual human being and that of the nation stand in a reciprocal relationship. On the one hand, the combined forces of the individual human beings only form the character of the nation, on the other hand, however, it is the nation that forms the prerequisite for the performance of individual human beings; for “the national character will be reflected in all individuals” (ibid., 346) and inspire them in their activity. It is the task of the individual to let the conditions in which he finds himself act upon him and not to reject any influence, but to work out these influences according to “objective principles” in his activity. In this way, a fruitful reciprocal relationship arises in the formation of the individual human being and the nation to which he belongs. In order to realize the ideal of humanity, the individual is dependent on all others; for “man is weak by himself and can do only little with his own short-lived power” (ibid.). Therefore, “it is to be investigated how the ideal perfection, which is unattainable for one individual, is expressed in several people” (ibid., 355). In his Theory of the Education of Man, which, however, remained a fragment, Humboldt has enriched the idea of the development and education of the individuality of man by one aspect. Now it is no longer a question of what contribution nature makes to the education of man in his peculiarity from the very beginning, but of how man further educates his individuality through his own activity. It is a question of the topic of self-education of man through the use of his own forces. The forces of the individual only come to fruition—so Humboldt—if they have an object in the world on which they can test themselves. He formulates this thought as follows: “In the center of all special kinds of activity, namely, man stands, who, without any intention directed to anything particular, only wants to strengthen and increase the forces of his nature, to give value and duration to his essence.

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However, since mere power needs an object on which to exercise itself, and mere form, pure thought, a substance in which it can persist, expressing itself therein, also needs a man, a world outside of itself ” (ibid., 235). In this way, ego and world separate from each other in order to reconnect with each other in activity. Education takes place in the mediation of ego and world. Education has a double function in this: As the human being educates himself in his activity, he also forms objects in the world. “Simply because both, his thinking and his acting, are possible only by means of something else, only by means of imagining and processing something, the distinguishing feature of which is that it is not human, i.e. world, he seeks, as much as possible to grasp the world, and to connect with himself as closely as he can” (ibid.). Humboldt places the anthropologically significant concept of the individual at the center of his concept of education, but as a thinker of mediation, he combines it with the concept of the person highlighted by Kant. For Humboldt, man is both individual and person. He is an individual person and, as a person, a representative of humanity. He picks up the important thought of “humanity in the person” for Kant’s “categorical imperative” (see Chap. IV, 2) and combines it with the following thought of individual life activity: “The final task of our existence: to give the concept of humanity in our person, both during the time of our life and beyond it, as much content as possible through the traces of living activity that we leave behind, this task can only be solved by the combination of our ego with the world to the most active and freest interaction” (ibid., 235 f.). By products of handicrafts and art, he himself impresses the character of his own onto the inanimate nature and at the same time gives his own existence a lasting continuation. Without education in the sense of mediation of ego and world, which is oriented towards duration, “the existence of man would be more fleeting than the existence of the plant, which, when it withers, at least has the certainty to leave behind the germ of a creature like itself ” (ibid., 236). Education is always both for Humboldt: the inner education of man in the development of the forces lying in him and at the same time the outer education of the objects of the world. Only through the combination of both aspects does man succeed in creating a whole. “However, if all these demands are limited to the inner being of man, then his nature constantly urges him from within to move beyond the objects outside of him, and here it is now important that he does not lose himself in this alienation, but rather that, of everything he undertakes outside of himself, he always brings back the enlightening light and the beneficial warmth into his innermost being. To this end, however, he must bring the mass of objects

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closer to himself, impress the shape of his mind onto this matter and make both of them more similar to each other” (ibid., 237). Humboldt already themes the concept of alienation here in a concentrated form, which will then play such a big role for Marx. Alienation occurs, according to his understanding, when man, in the course of machine-like productive activity, can no longer recognize himself as the creator of his own work in himself, i.e. when physical activity is separated from his mental activity. If it were up to man, however, to avoid this separation, then—so Humboldt—the outer education would correspond to the inner one and the outer success of his activity “showed us here, as in a mirror that is both enlightening and gathering, in immediate relation to our inner education” (ibid., 238). Education in the sense of Humboldt is the non-alienated appropriation of the world in the combination of physical and mental activity. In this process of education, an “own and new view of the world” (ibid., 239) arises. The unfolding of a “free individuality” is also the core of Humboldt’s state-theoretical considerations. He discussed them in his work Ideas for an Attempt to Determine the Limits of State Effectiveness from the year 1792. It represents the attempt to draw the boundaries of the absolutist state against the background of the thoughts of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. The ‘citoyen’, i.e. the citizen, should be able to pursue his own purposes unhindered within an area secured by the state both externally and internally (cf. Humboldt IV, 338, 589). He emphatically states that “the true reason can only wish man a state in which […] each individual enjoys the most unbound freedom to develop out of himself, in his peculiarity” (see quotation). The state must create the necessary freedom of space for the development of the individual’s forces, for his formative activity, for all his affairs, because, as his justification goes: “But of course freedom is the necessary condition without which even the most soulful business cannot produce healthy effects of this kind. What is not chosen by man, in which he is also only restricted and guided, does not pass into his essence, remains forever foreign to him, he does not really perform it with human strength, but with mechanical skill” (Humboldt I, 77). However, the development of individual freedom is impaired when “the superior power of the state hampers the free play of forces” (ibid., 72). This is especially true for the economic activities of the citizens. A decisive principle of his liberal state model therefore reads: The “state refrains from all care for the positive well-being of the citizens, and does not take a single step further than is necessary for their protection against

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themselves and against external enemies; for no other purpose does it restrict their freedom ” (ibid., 90). But the respect for the freedom of citizens goes further. It extends in a comprehensive sense to the field of culture. This means, for example, that the state must stay out of the field of education as well as out of religion, because “the origin of all religions is entirely subjective” (ibid., 226). Religion can therefore also not fulfill the task of guaranteeing public morality, because “the principles of morality are completely independent of religion” (ibid., 227). It is also not the task of the state to “act positively on morals”. Such an attempt is “outside the limits of the state’s effectiveness”. Its task is to ensure internal security and to enable citizens to enter into contracts on a voluntary basis. Within the field of criminal law, it is the task of the state to take appropriate measures “to ensure the security of citizens” (ibid., 156). Later, one has interpreted Humboldt’s theory of the state as a plea for a night watchman state, for example Ferdinand Lassalle, but thereby misunderstood the specific historical situation (cf. Gall 2011, 70 f.). Humboldt’s main concern was to fight for the political, economic and cultural freedom of the citizen against an absolutist state. Humboldt’s thoughts on philosophy of law are also inspired by the idea of individuality. Through him, the principle of universal human rights developed in the Enlightenment receives a new accent. While natural law emphasizes that every human being has the same human rights as an exemplar of his species, for Humboldt there is a general right of the human being to be recognized as an individual. It is not the appeal to something general that determines his ethical impulse, but the recognition of his individuality to which every human being is entitled. In his work On the Draft of a New Constitution for the Jews from the year 1809 he develops the thought as follows: “The state should not teach to respect the Jews but should abolish the inhumane and predjudiced way of thinking by wich a human being is not judged according to his own characteristics, but according to his descent and religion, and he does not look at him, contrary to all true concept of human dignity, as an individual, but as belonging to a race and certain properties as if they were necessarily shared with it. But this can only be done by the state if it declares loudly and clearly that it no longer recognizes any difference between Jews and Christians” (Humboldt IV, 97; cf. Borsche 1990, 51–54). The example makes it clear how much Humboldt remained committed to the principles of the Enlightenment, the political freedom of the citizen and universal human rights, including the “human dignity” he emphasized. After Humboldt was appointed to the Privy Council and Director of the Department of Culture and Education in February 1809, he developed

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principles for the reform of education in an amazingly short time of just over a year, which to a large extent still determine our school and university system today. The instruction, which is to be given in three different educational institutions, are “elementary instruction, school instruction, university instruction” (Humboldt IV, 169). They correspond to the “elementary schools”, also called “public schools”, the “learned schools”, i.e. the “grammar schools”, and the university. They not only build on each other, but they are also connected by a leading idea: the imparting of general education. This distinguishes them from “SpecialSchulen”, which are oriented towards the “trade of civil life”, such as “art schools, in which many craftsmen are already being taught” or in “agricultural, commercial, navigation schools” as well as “institutions for non-scientifically trained doctors, etc.” (ibid., 175). Schools that impart general education differ in principle from those with the goal of specific education. “Through the general, the forces, i.e. the human being himself, are to be strengthened, purified and regulated; through the special, he is only to receive skills for application” (ibid., 188). The “elementary schools” impart the basic knowledge that everyone needs to participate in social life as a citizen, especially since “many citizens visit only them and never another school” (ibid., 173). Although elementary instruction, which is given in the mother tongue, is limited to “hearing, expressing and fixing thoughts” (ibid., 169), it nevertheless comprises everything “on which the clarity and definiteness of concepts depend” (ibid., 173). The elementary school should, although in principle a school fee is levied, be open to everyone. “The very poor educated their children in the cheapest, or free elementary schools; the less poor in the better, or at least more expensive ones. Whoever could still use more attended the learned schools, remained in the higher classes, or left earlier, pursued more language instruction or more generally called real instruction. This was followed by university education, a special school or entry into civil life itself. Everyone, even the poorest, received a complete education, […] every intellectual individuality found its rights and its place” (ibid., 175). Humboldt defends this system of educational institutions against any criticism and categorically rejects the proposal to offer so-called “secondary schools” or “Realschule” as their own school form next to the Gymnasiums, which are to replace the lower classes of the Gymnasiums (cf. Spranger 1960, 163). Their purpose, “either to provide the transition from elementary to academic schools” or “to be a separate type of school for those who renounce academic education and university studies […] obviously disturbs the necessary unity of instruction” (Humboldt IV, 168). The “real schools” would tear away some subjects of the academic schools and, for example,

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offer a little Greek and Latin, but also the newer languages such ​​ as French and English, all “as if from use”, but without “proper scholarship” (ibid., 172). He calls the secondary schools downright “monstrosities” (ibid., 173). However, Humboldt admits that in places where there can be no academic schools, there must be “citizen schools”, “which, however, are then only the lower classes of the academic schools separated from them” (ibid., 192). The “school instruction” at the “academic schools”, for which a minimum age of nine years applies, has a clearly science-propaedeutic character. It is to prepare for university studies. In it, the old languages, Greek and Latin, have a central importance. Their teaching/imparting not only has the sense of penetrating into the nature of language by means of two dead languages, but also of reviving ancient culture. Gymnasium instruction therefore corresponds in a special way to the neo-humanist educational ideal represented by Humboldt. He remarks: “The purpose of school instruction is the exercise of abilities and the acquisition of knowledge without which scientific insight and skill are impossible. Both are to be prepared for by him; the young person is to be enabled, on the one hand, to collect the material with which every individual creation must always be connected, partly already now really, partly in future to be able to collect it at will, and to train the intellectual-mechanical forces. He is therefore occupied in two ways, once with learning itself, then with learning to learn” (ibid., 169 f.). Humboldt devotes special attention to the classical, humanistic, Gymnasium with the subjects Greek and Latin. He remarks on the goal of language instruction: “The pupil is matur when he has learned so much from others that he is now able to learn for himself. His language instruction, for example, is closed at school when he has come so far that, with his own effort and the use of the available aids, he can understand any author with certainty, as far as he is really comprehensible, and study easily and quickly into any given language, according to his general knowledge of the language structure as a whole.” (ibid., 170.). The Gymnasium prepares for university studies, but does not make them absolutely necessary. Since it serves general education, it also represents a gain for one who subsequently turns to a trade of bourgeois life. In a formulation reminiscent of Rousseau, Humboldt emphasizes: “Even to have learned Greek could be just as useful to the carpenter in this way as it is for the scholar to make tables” (ibid., 189). While the Gymnasium prepares for science, the university is the place where the student, with a minimum age of 18 years, can dedicate himself to scientific education in its purest form. Humboldt characterizes it as follows:

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“The university is reserved for what only man can find through and in himself, the insight into pure science. For this self-act in the strictest sense, freedom is necessary, and helpful loneliness, and from these two points flows the whole external organization of the universities. Listening to lectures is only a side issue, the essential thing is that one lives for a number of years in close community with like-minded and peers, and with the awareness that there are a number of already completed scholars at the same place who are dedicated to the elevation and dissemination of science.” (ibid., 191). Humboldts own contribution to the university as an institution is the successful implementation of the plan to establish a university in Berlin. According to the assessment of a renowned educator of the twentieth century, it is his “greatest deed” (Spranger 1960, 199). In a letter to King Friedrich Wilhelm III. of 12 May 1809, in the age of the Napoleonic wars, Humboldt justifies his project as follows: “If His Royal Majesty now confirmed this arrangement formally and secured its execution, he would connect everybody that is interested in education and enlightenment in Germany more firmly than ever; arouse new zeal and new warmth for the revival of your states, and at a time when part of Germany is devastated by war, another is ruled by foreigners in a foreign language, the German science perhaps still will become to a hopeful and free place.” (Humboldt IV, 30). The plan was accepted by the king and the “royal charter of foundation” was issued on 16 August of the same year. Among the first professors of the new university were Schleiermacher, Savigny, Hufeland, Fichte, F.A. Wolf, Niebuhr and others. (vgl. Berglar 1970, 94). The university developed quite in the spirit of Humboldt as a place of high academic standards and the unity of research and teaching always demanded by him. In it, the contribution of the professors—according to Humboldt—lies not so much in teaching the students the results of their research, but in making them part of their research process and encouraging them to do their own research. In this way, they should be given the opportunity to educate themselves in a comprehensive way in a confrontation with the scientific objects and in close association with the professors and their fellow students. The university as a place of scientific freedom and individual education corresponds in a special way to Humboldt’s understanding of pedagogical ethics. Humboldt’s history of reception first extends to the field of pedagogy. He developed the neo-humanistic ideal of education, which not only became leading in the field of school and university, but also decisively influenced social consciousness. It has its spiritual center in the concepts of individuality and education. But his liberal understanding of the state, which included

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both the freedom of the economic citizen (bourgeois) and the freedom of the state citizen (citoyen), also proved to be effective. Of particular importance, in the age of restoration, is his committed defense of human rights.

3 The Fight for the Rights of the Child (Montessori) “Parents must meet the most burning social problem with openness and willingness: I mean the fight for the recognition of the rights of the child. A lot has been said lately about human rights, especially about the rights of the worker; but now is the time to talk about the social rights of the child. The question of work laid the foundation for social change, for humanity lives solely on human work; so the material life of the entire human race depended on the solution of that problem. But if the worker produces what the human consumes—the production of external things—then the child produces nothing less than humanity itself and therefore the consideration of its rights requires even more urgent social transformation. It does not need to be pointed out that society should show the children the most perfect and wise care—after all, it is they from whom we hope for more energy and greater possibilities for humanity tomorrow. That the rights of the child have been forgotten and ignored, that the child has been abused, indeed destroyed, that one still does not recognize its value, its power and its nature, all this should give humanity cause for serious reflection.” (Maria Montessori: Children are different. Stuttgart 2018, 289 f.). Maria Montessori is born on August 31, 1870 in Chiaravalle near Ancona/Italy. In the years 1892 to 1896 she studies medicine at the University of Rome and completes her studies as the first female doctor in Italy with a PhD. From 1897 she is active at the Psychiatric Clinic of the University of Rome. In 1898 her son is born, who grows up with a foster family and whom she does not take with her until 1913. From 1897 to 1899 she gives lectures on women’s emancipation and social reform at congresses in Turin, Rome and London. In 1900 she takes over the management of the medical-pedagogical institute opened by the National League for the Education of Disabled Children in Rome with a model school for the training of teachers for the disabled. In 1902 she resigns from the management of the institute and begins her studies in pedagogy, experimental psychology and anthropology. From 1904 to 1908 she attends lectures on anthropology

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and biology at the Pedagogical Institute of the University of Rome. In January 1907 she opens the first “children’s house” (casa dei bambini) in the Roman district of San Lorenzo. With her book Il metodo della pedagogia scientifica (Eng. The Discovery of the Child ) she achieves international recognition. The Montessori method is introduced in Swiss primary schools as well as in English and Argentine schools, and also in model schools in Paris, New York and Boston. In 1911 Montessori gives up her medical practice and from now on devotes herself exclusively to the international dissemination of her method. From 1916 to 1936 she lives in Barcelona. After a personal encounter with Mussolini her method is introduced in Italian schools in 1924. In 1933 the National Socialists destroy the German Montessori movement. After conflicts with fascism, the Montessori schools are also closed in Italy in 1934. At the outbreak of the civil war in Spain in 1936, Montessori moves her residence to Amsterdam. In the same year her book The Secret of Childhood (Eng. Children are different ) is published. In 1939 Montessori leaves Europe and lives until 1946 in India. There her method finds very quick and widespread acceptance. After her return to Europe, the 8th international Montessori congress takes place in San Remo in 1949. Maria Montessori dies on May 6, 1952 in Nordwijk aan Zee in the Netherlands (cf. Kramer 1999; Heiland 2014). Montessoris leading idea is: It is about rediscovering and promoting the world of the child, which is so different from the world of adults. She is in the tradition of Rousseau, who was the first to bring the childhood to light as its own reality to be respected. She also follows his thoughts when she points out that the children, as one can hope, represent a better future for humanity. Therefore, it is important that the children do not orient themselves to the present, problematic world of adults, but rather that adults learn from children how the world could be designed to be happier in the future. This means that the children should not learn to take over our way of life, but that we, the adults, can learn from the children in advance how the world could be. That is: “So we have to see the child as fateful for our future life […] From this point of view, the figure of the child appears powerful and mysterious, and we have to meditate on it, so that the child, who bears the mystery of our nature in itself, may become our teacher” (ibid., 288). In order for this change of perspective to succeed, it is necessary that the view of the child changes radically. It is about recognizing the rights of the child in a serious way (see quotation). But this was not the case until the end of the nineteenth century. Montessori explains with a number of examples to which tribulations the children were exposed. Many diseases and the high mortality rate of children are evidence of this. The schools, for

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example, were a place where children “had to endure compulsory torture: for example, the small chest, which was predisposed to tuberculosis, came about because the children were forced to read and write for hours in a bent position; in addition, this led to the deformation of the spine” (ibid., 293). And she continues: “But the torture was not only of a physical nature, it also extended to mental work. Learning became a heavy burden, the children swayed between boredom and fear, they were mentally exhausted and nervous. They were lazy, discouraged, melancholic, corrupted, without self-confidence and without any childlike joy of life” (ibid.). Awareness of the problem only awoke towards the end of the century. It started with medical examinations in schools. The results were more than worrying: “Many children were already tired when they came to school because they had had to work earlier in the morning. Some had carried milk and walked several kilometers in doing so, others had sold newspapers on the street or had worked at home, so that they came to school hungry and sleepy and only wanted one thing: to rest. These poor children were then beaten by the teacher if they did not pay attention or did not understand his explanations. He, who only thought of his own task and especially of his authority, tried to achieve attention through scolding and obedience through threatening […] So the life of these poor pupils passed between the exploitation by their families and the punishment by the teacher” (ibid., 293 f.). The imagination in the methods of punishment went even further. “Other punishments were outright physical torture: For example, if a child had to stand in the corner for hours, facing the wall, so that it could not see anything, could not occupy itself with anything, became tired and bored” (ibid., 295). In these examples, the understanding of the pedagogy represented over centuries is expressed. Montessori characterizes the concept of this “black pedagogy” as follows: “In all pedagogical efforts, indeed in the whole pedagogy, the word education was almost always synonymous with chastisement and the goal of education was to make the child submissive to the adult, the adult who puts himself in the place of nature and his purposes and his will in the place of the commandments of life” (ibid., 294 f.). In her opinion, the prerequisite for a pedagogical new beginning was to first of all hold oneself accountable for the extent to which the world of the child differs from that of the adult. The world into which the newborn comes is the world of the adult, and that is determined by his needs, not those of the child. Children have no place in it. So: “What are children? A permanent disturbance for the adult who is increasingly burdened with worries and occupations. There is no place for them in the cramped houses of

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modern cities, in which families crowd together. There is no place for them on the streets, because the vehicles claim more and more space and the sidewalks are full of hurrying people. Adults have no time to take care of children, because they have pressing duties. Both father and mother are forced to work, and where there is no work, need oppresses and damages children as well as adults. There is hardly any refuge where the child can feel that its state of mind is understood […] It must be good, behave quietly, it may not touch anything that does not belong to it. […] What does it belong to? Nothing. A few decades ago, there was not even a chair for children” (ibid., 15 f.). It was the recognition of this oppressive situation of the child that led Montessori to a new orientation of her thinking. How can an environment be created for children that is appropriate to their experience of the world and that promotes their development? This was the question that was to preoccupy Montessori for the rest of her life. At the beginning of her engagement were the experiences she made as a young doctor in 1897 with mentally retarded children in the Psychiatric Clinic of the University of Rome. Montessori studied the work of Jean Itard, who in 1800 medically cared for a boy of 11 or 12 years old who had grown up without human contact in the forests near Aveyron. Montessori explains: “When the boy was found, he was deaf, and remained so; his mind […] proved to be unsuitable for intellectual education.”/“And yet the scientific pedagogy owes its first successes to this child” (Montessori 2015, 81). Itard was able to convey the meaning of the word “LAIT” (milk) to the “Wild Man of Aveyron”, as he was called, for example, by assigning colored geometric symbols to letters (cf. Kramer 1999, 73). Montessori picked up this approach and had an unexpected success with disabled children in the clinic. She reports: “I was able to teach some mentally retarded children from the asylum to read and write correctly in calligraphy. These children were then able to take an exam together with normal children in a public school, which they also passed” (Montessori 1969, 32). What is more: For her, the experiences with mentally disabled children led to the decision to study pedagogy, experimental psychology and anthropology at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Rome in 1902 (cf. Kramer 1999, 117 f.). The result of her studies was a new understanding of the development of the child from birth. She differentiates between the still prevailing inappropriate way of dealing with the newborn and one that is appropriate to the situation of the child. Her criticism of the prevailing practice is mainly that the adults are not even able to recognize, alongside the care for the expectant mother, the

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extremely strenuous and almost violent transition of the baby from the protected space of the uterus to the extra-uterine environment. Montessori describes this contrast as follows: “Around the mother, the light is dimmed, there is silence, because the mother is exhausted. / Isn’t the child exhausted? Didn’t it come from a place where no light, no sound ever reached it? So the child has the greatest claim to darkness and silence. / […] But what does the adult do with this newborn, who comes from nothing, whose delicate eyes have never seen light, whose ears are accustomed to a realm of complete silence? How does he treat this being, whose tortured limbs have never known the pressure of a touch? / This delicate body is exposed to the brutal impact of solid objects, is grasped by the soulless hands of adults who know nothing of its delicacy. / Yes, the newborn is treated brutally. Heavy hands rub its sensitive skin with rough towels. […] / The doctor handles it without much ado, and when it screams in despair, everyone smiles approvingly. A baby is supposed to behave like that, crying is its language, and the more it cries, the more its lungs expand, the better its eyes are cleaned” (Montessori 2018, 42 f.). People—so Montessori—could take advice from the animal world, especially that of mammals, when accompanying the birth process. “The mammals living in freedom often take care of their young with even greater care. Almost all of these animals live in large herds. But when the female feels the hour of childbirth approaching, she always withdraws from the group and looks for a remote, hidden place. After the birth, the mother keeps the young in the silence isolated, for a period of time that varies according to the species between two and three weeks, up to a month or more. Suddenly, at this opportunity, the mother turns into a nurse and helper of the new creatures. […] The logic of this instinct is clear and simple: the newborn of a mammal needs special help during the time of its first contact with the external world” (ibid., 50 ff.). Translated to the human infant, this meant: “This treatment would consist, for example, in providing a room protected from the noise of the city, where there is sufficient silence and the lighting can be dimmed. This room would have to be kept at a constant temperature like an operating room, so that the child can lie naked in it” (ibid., 46). This makes the early, already criticized by Rousseau, restrictive clothing superfluous. But in addition to the physical care of the infant, the consideration of his mental development has to take precedence, which clearly distinguishes him from the animal. “The fact that man is not controlled by fixed and predetermined drives, as is the case with animals, points to the existence of a certain freedom of action, which can only mature slowly. One could almost speak

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of a creation that is left to the individual and cannot be predetermined in advance. […] One could say that the creator did not fully trust nature and therefore entrusted the higher tasks—those of construction and leadership— to the energy of the individual, an energy that overlaps nature and can therefore be called supernatural. This is the basic fact of human development: the human spirit must become flesh to open and enable the way into existence, and this process of becoming flesh represents the first chapter in the child’s life” (ibid., 57 ff.). Montessori reverses the common understanding of human development with this concept. While evolutionary theory and developmental psychology always assume that a process of progressive spiritualization, sublimation, takes place in natural development, Montessori postulates a “spiritual embryo” that requires “becoming flesh” (cf. ibid., 54). She makes it clear that this thought has to be understood in the religious context of Christianity. She explains it as follows: “When we use the word incarnation, we express the idea that in the body of a newborn a spirit has become flesh to live on this earth. This idea is alive in Christianity as one of the most venerated mysteries of religion, as the incarnation of the divine spirit according to the word: ‘Et incarnatus est de Spiritu Sancto: et homo factus est ’” (ibid., 54). Montessori here combines two difficult to reconcile anthropological concepts: according to one, man is the individual freed from natural instincts, who, because of his freedom, can shape his life himself; according to the other, man is a “spiritual embryo”, whose “becoming flesh” corresponds to a religiously to be interpreted cosmic order. The child’s psychological development does not take place continuously, but in individual phases, which Montessori called “sensitive periods”. These are “very specific periods of receptivity” which can be activated by a certain energy in the child. Without this energy, the child would not be able to use the impressions of the environment productively. Montessori notes: “In the child, the creative attitude, the potential energy is present, which enables him, based on his impressions of the environment, to build up a mental world” (ibid., 65). It is important to note that these “sensitive periods” are only of a certain duration in order to enable the child “to acquire a certain ability. Once this has been done, the relevant receptivity subsides again” (ibid., 66). For example, language acquisition is linked to a certain “sensitive period”. The process can be described as follows: “First, the sounds that penetrate the child from the environment form a confused, incomprehensible jumble. But then the child is suddenly enchanted and attracted by those sounds that belong to the articulated language that is still incomprehensible to him; his soul, in which there is no thought yet, listens to them like a kind

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of music and fills up with them. Like an electric shock, it goes through the child’s muscles—not through all of them, but only through those that have so far produced nothing but unformed screams. These muscle groups now suddenly wake up and begin to move in a regulated and disciplined manner, and with the newly acquired order of their activity the sounds they produce also change. […] His ear begins to distinguish, his tongue is irresistibly forced to seek the touch of the throat, the lips, the cheeks. This still seems to be purposeless, to be of no use. The child only performs these movements because he feels an indescribable sense of pleasure. / This innate sense of pleasure he expresses with his whole body when he sits with tense limbs, clenched fists and upright head and looks at the moving lips of the speaking adult” (ibid., 72 f.). The further development of language takes place as follows: “A fourmonth-old child already attentively looks at the mouth of the speaking adult, while performing indefinite lip movements and keeping his head quite stiff and upright, obviously attracted by this interesting phenomenon. Only at the age of six month will this child begin to articulate a few syllables, but long before the loud articulation begins, a noticeable interest in sound combinations can be observed and the hidden work of animating one’s own speech organs begins, which in turn proves how a mental stimulus precedes the act. Such sensitivities can probably be observed, but not researched by means of experiments” (ibid., 79). Of course, the adult can learn additional languages, but only with “hard work”, and in addition he “never achieves the perfection with which he masters his mother tongue acquired in childhood” (ibid., 68). It is noteworthy that Montessori refers to the child’s language acquisition as a work. She deliberately chooses this expression because she is convinced that not only the life of the adult, but also the life of the child takes place in the medium of work. In the work of the adult, it is about the “construction of a life area that lies above the sphere of the natural. This is an external work, carried by reason-determined will power and also referred to as productive work, social, collective and organized by nature” (ibid., 265). The work of the child, on the other hand, is hardly ever noticed, let alone appreciated, although it is of equal importance to that of the adult. The work of the child consists in nothing less than the “task of forming the human being. If the inactive, mute, immobile and consciousness-lacking newborn has become a finished adult, with an intelligence that is enriched by the achievements of mental life and with the radiant light of the spirit, then this is all due to the child. / Because only through the child is the human being built up. […] The work of the child belongs to a different order and has a

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different power than the work of the adult, indeed is opposed to this: It is an unconscious work, realized by a spiritual energy in development, a creative work” (ibid., 269). The pedagogical-ethical demand on the adult is to recognize this work and to give the child a protected space for its fulfillment. Both language development and other areas of child development are part of this work. One area is the sense of order developed by the child. There is also a specific “sensitive period” for him. “It may sound surprising and presumptuous when we claim that the child goes through a period of receptivity for external order; after all, the general conviction is that the child is naturally disorderly” (ibid., 81). But this assumption is wrong. “Small children show a characteristic love of order” (ibid.). It is much more important to the child, “to find everything where it belongs” (ibid., 89). The sense of this love of order is immediately clear. It makes you familiar with the world. “In such an environment known to him in its context, the child is able to orient himself, to move and to achieve his goals […] In this way, the child does that preparatory work on the basis of which the adult will then be able to find his way in life and to seek his way” (ibid.). However, this sense of order is linked to a specific “sensitive period”, “which disappears again with increasing age” (ibid., 82). The third example of an important section in early childhood development is the ability to walk. Upright walking requires a skill that is reserved for humans. “Nature is able to solve this difficulty, but only by means of two aids: one is instinct, the other an individual effort. […] The famous, joyfully welcomed ‘first step’ actually represents a triumph and marks the transition from the first to the second year of life. It is, so to speak, the birth of the active human being, who takes the place of the inactive. With it, a new life begins for the child” (ibid., 115). In this way, the child literally and figuratively gains a first ‘independence’. In 1907, Montessori had the opportunity to transfer and further develop her first pedagogical experiences, which she had gained in the field of psychiatry with mentally handicapped children, to a group of 50 to 60 children in San Lorenzo, the slum of Rome, who were to be looked after pedagogically during the day when their parents were working for their poorly paid jobs (cf. Kramer 1999, 134). In each house of this district, a “children’s room”, casa dei bambini was set up, which was to be looked after by a woman. Montessori describes the beginning of her work as follows: “It was the sixth of January 1907 when our first school for normally gifted children from three to six years of age was opened. […] Originally, it was only intended to bring the younger children of the workers together in a tenement house in a room so that they would not be left to themselves on the

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stairs, soiling the walls and causing mischief in general. For this purpose, a room was made available in the building and I was entrusted with the care of this facility, which was said to have ‘a promising future’” (Montessori 2018, 160 f.). Montessori decided to take up the concept that had proven so successful in dealing with mentally handicapped children when choosing the teaching material. The success was even greater: “The teaching material that I offered to the normal children did not have the same effect on them as it had on mentally handicapped children. If the relevant object attracted the normal child, it immediately fixed its whole attention on it. It worked with it and worked incessantly, in an admirable concentration. After it had worked, only then did the child seem satisfied, rested and happy. Rest was to be read in these small, cheerful faces, in these contentedly shining children’s eyes, after a voluntary task had been carried out. […] It took a long time before I convinced myself that this was no illusion” (ibid., 162). The description makes it clear that the children’s activity is work in the sense explained by her and not play. Therefore, it is also understandable that she is extremely critical of the pedagogy of play developed by Friedrich Fröbel and the toys used by him (cf. Heiland 2014, 83). In fact—as Montessori—the children are not interested in playing. She states: “Although truly splendid toys were available to the children in our school, not one of the children paid any attention to them. […] The children […] never spontaneously chose these things as toys. This led me to the thought that perhaps playing was something subordinate in the life of the child, to which it only then turned for refuge when nothing better, which it valued more highly, was available to it. […] For every minute that passes is precious to the child, representing the transition from a lower to a higher level. The child is, after all, in a state of constant growth, and everything related to the means of its development fascinates it and makes it insensitive to any idle dallying” (Montessori 2018, 171). The “sensory material”, which Montessori uses, is therefore to be understood as work material and not as a toy. Associated with it is a task to be solved by the child through its handling. The task lies in the field of mathematics, arithmetic as well as geometry, art, especially music, and language, for the purpose of reading and writing. For example, letters cut from rough paper can be used to put words together. Montessori explains the nature of her material as follows: “The sensory material consists of a system of objects that are arranged according to certain physical properties of bodies such as color, form, dimensions, sound, state of roughness, weight, temperature, etc. For example, a series of bells that reproduce musical tones; a group of tablets

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in different color shades; a series of bodies of the same form and graduated dimensions, others that differ from each other in their geometric form; things of different weights and of the same size, etc.” (Montessori 2015, 122). The children of a group who are ‘working’ in their room, which is also adapted to the size of the child in its furniture, take an ensemble of objects from the shelf stocked with material and solve the associated task alone, in pairs or in the group. What a fascinating effect their solution can have, Montessori has described in a famous example: “The first appearance that caught my attention was that of a three-year-old girl who was busy putting the series of our wooden cylinders into the corresponding openings and taking them out again. […] I was amazed when I saw such a small child repeating an exercise over and over again with deep interest. There was no progress in the speed and accuracy of the execution” (Montessori 2018, 167). The child was also not disturbed when the other children were running around the room singing. “Then I carefully took the little armchair on which the little one was sitting and put it on the table with the child. The little one had quickly taken her cylinders to herself and was now, with the material on her knees, continuing her exercise undisturbed. Since I had started counting, the little one had repeated her exercise forty-two times. Now she stopped, as if she woke up from a dream, and smiled with the expression of a happy person. Her bright eyes looked around cheerfully. Apparently she had not noticed any of those maneuvers that were supposed to distract her. But now, without any external reason, her work was finished” (ibid.). Montessori calls the phenomenon described the “polarization of attention”. She shows that every human being, and especially the child, can be so fascinated by a self-chosen task that he mediates himself with the world in its fulfillment and finds himself. The willingness to offer the child opportunities for self-directed exploration of the world is what Montessori demands of adults in her pedagogical ethics. The method of reward and punishment that prevails in traditional education has no place in it (cf. ibid., 172). The history of the pedagogical method developed by Montessori is enormous. This does not change the criticism of her positivist understanding of science expressed by Eduard Spranger and others (cf. Heiland 2014, 136) and her mixing of scientific statements with those that have a religious or philosophical character and are determined by “her own, growing mysticism with age” (Kramer 1999, 55). As early as 1911, the Montessori method was introduced in Italian and Swiss primary schools and also in English and Argentine schools. Model schools were built in Paris, New York and Boston, and national Montessori

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societies were founded (see Heiland 2014, 134). In 1929, the Association Montessori Internationale (AMI) was founded in Berlin and later moved to Amsterdam. Associated with her stay in India, Montessori schools also developed there. Today, the Montessori pedagogy can be found in the most diverse school forms worldwide. Its method has become part of the generally recognized reform pedagogy (see Kramer 1999, 11 ff.).

IX Concepts of Radical Moral Criticism

The moment of criticism is inherent in morality itself. This is true for the ancient ethics of happiness, which recommends life according to reason to man, as well as for the philosophically-theological ethics, which is oriented towards the hereafter, for the duty ethics, which issues imperatives, as well as for the utilitarian ethics, the emotive ethics or the ethics of values. They always recommend something and warn against something else, they command one thing and forbid another. The fundamental distinction is that of “good and bad” or “good and evil”. But all these distinctions are themselves of a moral nature. They constitute the respective type of morality. The positions of radical moral criticism differ from this type of criticism. The authors treated here generally criticize the claim of morality of their time. Their criticism is not aimed at individual moral commandments or prohibitions, but at morality as a whole. The first starting point of their criticism is the apparent finality of morality, its allegedly “eternal” validity. They argue historically. For them, morality is no longer a set of commandments of God or nature. Rather, it is a historically conditioned and therefore changeable morality. Morality is made by men. The second point that all the authors discussed here have in common is that they question the existence of the respective morality. Their criticism becomes radical when they ask: For what purpose morality at all? And further: How is morality itself to be judged from a moral point of view? Does morality perhaps have an immoral origin? Isn’t it in reality a large-scale deception? What purpose does morality serve? Their common answer is: Morality is developed by the ruling class as an instrument for disciplining © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer-Verlag GmbH, DE, part of Springer Nature 2023 W. Pleger, The Good Life, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-05969-7_10

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those they rule. Moral criticism has three purposes for them: First, it has an ideological-critical intention, i.e. it wants to reveal the deceptive character of the prevailing morality. Secondly, by exposing morality, it wants to create the conditions for breaking the power of morality. Finally, she wants to replace the old morality with a new one, a morality that does without deception, a “true” morality that corresponds to the real human conditions. The mentioned elements of a radical moral criticism can be found in the authors discussed. The ancient Sophists emphasize that the laws of the polis have their origin neither in divine commandments nor in nature, but are agreed upon by men. The difference between ‘physis and nomos ’ plays the decisive role for them. The thesis put forward by Platon quoted Kallikles is that the laws have been enacted by “the weak and the great multitude” in order to suppress the strong. Marx and Engels emphasize in a similar way that the prevailing morality is always the morality of the ruling class. It is the morality of the ruling class, the bourgeoisie. However, and this is where they differ decisively from the Sophists, the bourgeoisie is in relation to the class of proletarians suppressed by them, a minority. The abolition of this morality takes place necessarily— so Marx and Engels—when class rule itself is abolished. The goal is the classless society, a “realm of freedom”. Nietzsche finally orients himself again to the principle of “the right of the stronger” brought to bear by the Sophists. This original aristocratic morality of ancient Greece was overthrown by a “slave uprising in morality”. The blame for this, in his opinion, lies with “ascetic priests” who developed their morality in Judaism. This morality of the weak and oppressed was taken over by Christianity. The heir and continuer of this morality is modern democracy, which—according to Nietzsche—instead of accepting a natural hierarchy of values, propagates the legal equality of all people.

1 The “Right of the Stronger” (Sophists) “I alone think that those who make the laws are the weak and the great multitude. In relation to themselves and what is useful to them, they determine the laws […] and to keep stronger people in fear, who could have more, so that they may not have more than they themselves, they say it is ugly and unjust to always strive for more […]. But nature itself, I think, proves the contrary, that it is just for the nobler to have more than the worse and the

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more capable than the less capable. But she shows in many ways that this is the case, both in other animals and in whole states and races of men, that the right is determined so that the better shall rule over the worse and have more. […] So I think they do this according to nature and, by Zeus, also according to the law, namely the law of nature; but of course perhaps not according to the one we make ourselves, we who from youth up, as one does with the lion, enslave the best and the strongest among us by means of incantation and enchantment, always telling them that everyone must be equal, and that this is just and beautiful. But if, I think, one becomes a man with a really good nature, he shakes all this off, tears himself loose, breaks and tramples all our writings and juggling and incantations and unnatural laws, and stands up plainly as our master, he, the slave, and in this the right of nature shines forth most clearly.” (Plato: Gorgias, 483 b- 484 b. Works in eight volumes. Vol. 2. Darmstadt 1973) Sophism represents an important intellectual movement that falls into a period of transition in Greek history in the 5th century. It comprises three aspects: on the one hand, the dissolution of the binding nature of myth, which offered mankind a comprehensive world orientation; on the other hand, an anthropological turn, which is accompanied by a loss of significance of natural philosophical questions; and finally, thirdly, the decline of the political pre-eminence of the nobility and its replacement by the rule of tyrants on the one hand and the formation of democracy on the other. The Sophists, who by no means represent a unified group but include very different, sometimes very idiosyncratic personalities, have played an important role in all these areas. They question the binding nature of myth; they turn decisively to anthropological questions, for example by addressing questions of education and training; and they focus on the political question of the legitimacy of rule and come to very different results. In order to explain the dissolution of the binding nature of myth, it should be remembered that this comprised less dogmatic beliefs, but rather determined customs and rites, above all the legal system. Sophocles (497/6– 406) paid tribute to this mythically determined legal thinking once again in his tragedy Antigone, which was first performed in 442. Antigone, the protagonist of the play named after her, is prepared to accept the death penalty by burying her brother, who fell in battle against his own city, in defiance of her father’s, the king of Thebes’, orders, and thus handing him over to Hades, the ruler of the realm of the dead (cf. Sophocles: Antigone V. 519).

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However, the myth is called into question to the extent that, for example, knowledge of burial rites in other countries spreads, which are also mythologically legitimized in their own way. Herodotus drew attention to the relativity of customs in his Nine Books of History by reporting that there are peoples who eat the bodies of their parents, while others burn them, and that each of them declares the behaviour of the other to be “godless”. He comments on this relativity as follows: “So everyone has their own way in this, and it seems to me that Pindar is right in his song when he calls custom a king over all” (Herodotus n.d. 220). The Sophists’ criticism of myths contains different aspects. It ranges from cautious agnosticism to decided atheism. For the first version, Protagoras from Abdera (481-411) is often considered “the most important, because original, of the Sophists” (Capelle 1968, 323). The attributed quote from him is: “I have no way of knowing (determining?) about the gods, neither that they are, nor that they are not, nor what they are like in form; for many things there are that prevent knowledge (determination?): the invisibility and that life of man is short” (DK 80, fr. 4). The dissolution of the binding character of the myth through explanation of its origin can be found with Prodicus, who was born on Keos in the first half of the 5th century. Sextus Empiricus attributes the following statement to him: “that the people of ancient times considered sun and moon, rivers and springs, and in general everything that is useful for our life, to be gods because of the benefits they provided, like the Egyptians considered the Nile, and therefore bread was considered to be for the goddess Demeter, wine for the god Dionysus, water for Poseidon, fire for Hephaestus, and accordingly every thing that was useful (to humans)” (Capelle 1968, 367f.). The sharpest form of criticism of myths can be found with Critias, an uncle or cousin of Plato’s, who fell in battle against Thrasybulus in 403 as one of the “thirty tyrants”. Critias puts his thesis, which is supposed to reveal the myth as a priest fraud, into the historical context of the emerging legal system among humans. First, “the life of humans was unordered and beastly and subject to strength” (DK 88 fr. 25). In order to end this state, humans have established “laws” “as a disciplinarian, so that justice would be ruler” (ibid.). In this way, it became possible to punish crimes that were uncovered. Those that were not recognized, however, remained unpunished. In this situation, “it seems to me”—so Critias—“a clever and thoughtful man invented the fear for mortals, so that there would be a deterrent for the bad, even if they did something or spoke or thought in secret. From this consideration, he introduced the supernatural […]. With these speeches, he

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introduced the most enticing of teachings, concealing the truth with lying words” (ibid.). The Sophists have contributed significantly to the traditional ‘polis-mindedness’ dissolved. Aristophanes has made the Sophists, to which he also Socrates counted in his comedies for this decline responsible. In fact, this change created the problem of re-legitimizing the validity of legal norms. The Sophists did this by no longer mythologically legitimizing the laws of the polis, but interpreting them as a matter of interpersonal agreement. These agreed, political laws, they set in contrast to the non-agreed, but always valid, necessary laws of nature. Nomos and physis now formed the new framework of their considerations (cf. Heinimann 1980, 110). However, they interpreted nature very differently. They were only agreed that the laws of the polis and the laws of nature often contradict each other and that it was the laws of nature, which the political ones had to orient themselves to. The Sophist from Athens Antiphon describes the difference between both types of law and at the same time points to the different binding of both: “Justice consists in not violating the statutory provisions of the state in which one is a citizen. So a person will have the most benefit from the application of justice if he keeps the laws in front of witnesses, but alone and without witnesses the commandments of nature; for the laws are arbitrary, but the nature is necessary […]. The consideration of these things is generally made for the sake of those who most of the legal provisions are hostile to nature” (DK 87, fr. 44). Antiphon takes sides for nature and criticizes the state laws. But how does he understand nature? What are its “commandments”? His decisive thesis is: All men are equal by nature and therefore have equal rights. He is one of the first in European history to emphasize the equality of all men, and thus rejects the self-evident discrimination of the “barbarians” in Greece. The privileging of the “Greeks” is for him an act of barbarism (cf. Guthrie 1993, 153). He says: “We honor and revere those who come from noble fathers, but those who are not from noble families, we do not honor and revere. Here we behave like barbarians to each other, because we are all created equal in all respects, barbarians as Greeks […]. We all breathe through mouth and nose into the air and we all eat with the help of our hands […]>” (DK 87, fr. 1). This thesis of the equality of all men rejects Thrasymachus, a rhetorician and Sophist from Chalcedon, who lived in Athens in the second half of the 5th century, decidedly. He has written a book on rhetoric, in which he deals with the generation of emotions and the effective manner of presentation.

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Plato made him a representative of a political view in an early dialogue, which was to become the first book of his Politeia later, which can be understood as the position of the ‘right of the stronger’. It is not certain to what extent the position attributed to him by Plato corresponds to the historical one. But since Thrasymachus is a historical figure whose work was known, it is unlikely that Plato deviated from it very much. More important than the historical accuracy in detail is the fact that Plato sharply contradicted the position of Thrasymachus. The thesis of the ‘right of the stronger’ is that of the Tyrannis, which Plato saw as the greatest political evil (see section I, 1). His actual interest in the presentation of this approach lies in its refutation by the arguments which he lets Socrates present. The topic of the dialogue is the attempt at a definition of justice. The result of the conversations previously conducted by Socrates with Kephalos and Polemarchos was the thesis presented by Socrates: “For it has become clear to us that it could in no way be just to cause harm to anyone” (Politeia 335 e). Thrasymachus does not agree with this definition of justice and finally gives his own definition. He says: “I maintain that justice is nothing other than what is advantageous to the stronger” (338 c). The stronger is to be understood in a political sense; it is the ruler. He explains his thesis as follows: “And every government gives the laws according to what is advantageous to it, the democracy democratic, the tyranny tyrannical and the others likewise. And by giving them in this way, they thus show that this is advantageous to them is just for the ruled. And they punish those who transgress it as lawless and unjust” (338 e). However—as Socrates’ objection goes—those in power can occasionally make mistakes and then issue commands that are not beneficial to them. But Thrasymachus does not allow this objection to stand. Only the doctor who treats his patients correctly can be called a doctor, and the same goes for those in power, i.e. “that the ruler, insofar as he is a ruler, does not fail” (341 a). Socrates takes up this analogy and clarifies: a doctor in the strict sense of the word is one who treats his patients for their own good, not in the sense that he practices a profession in order to make money. And in the same sense, the art of the steersman consists solely in providing safety and well-being for his fellow passengers, and that of the shepherd, for the welfare of his sheep. Everywhere the art consists in providing what is beneficial for the goods entrusted to them. Translated to those in power, this meant that justice would be what is beneficial to those who are ruled, not what is beneficial to those who rule (cf. 342 e). But Thrasymachus is of course not in agreement with this conclusion. For him, the art of the shepherd consists rather in fattening the sheep in order to slaughter them (cf. Taureck 1995, 75). Therefore he

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gives up the analogy. He now emphasizes that “the just man is always worse off than the unjust man” (343 d); for he always claims equality, while the unjust man is always out for his own advantage. Justice is therefore a “very good-natured simplicity” (348 c). And now he develops his plea for the way of life of the unjust man, who practices injustice on a large scale. He says: “I mean the one who knows how to take advantage of others on a large scale. So look at him, if you want to judge how much more it benefits everyone if he is unjust than if he is just. But you will recognize it most easily if you hold on to the most perfect injustice, which makes the one who has done wrong the happiest, but those who have suffered wrong and do not want to do wrong again, the most miserable. But this is the so-called tyranny, which not only appropriates the property of its fellow citizens by trickery and force, sacred and profane, public and private, but rather all of it at once […]. But if someone, in addition to his fellow citizens’ property, also brings them into his power and makes them slaves, he is instead called blessed and praiseworthy […]. In this way, Socrates, injustice is stronger and nobler and more honorable than justice when it is practiced on a large scale” (344 a-c). Thrasymachus sees his thesis confirmed here: the justice of those ruled, this “good-natured simplicity”, is the “advantageous and beneficial” for those who rule (cf. 338 e and 344 c). Socrates refutes this position with a question that makes it clear that the principle of justice cannot be left out in tyranny either. He asks: “Do you think that if a city or an army or even robbers and thieves or any other people jointly commit something unjust, they will be able to achieve anything if they also do wrong to each other?” (351 c). And after Thrasymachus has denied this, his justification follows: “Because injustice, o Thrasymachus, causes them discord and hatred and strife with each other; but justice concord and friendship” (351 d). Thrasymachus also admits this and thus gives up. In his dialogue Gorgias the platonicSocrates deals with three other Sophists who represent the thesis of the ‘right of the stronger’ in different ways. Gorgias, after whom the dialogue is named, is a historically significant figure. He was born around 480 BC and is said to have lived to be over 100 years old. After a phase of natural philosophy, he turned to rhetoric and led the life of a wandering teacher. His students included Isocrates, Alkidamas, the Polos appearing in the dialogue, and Agathon, but also politicians such as Pericles, Alcibiades and Critias. In the platonic dialogue he represents the thesis that rhetoric is a non-violent art with which one can nevertheless exercise power over people. He propagates the ‘right of the stronger’ in a subtle way. It is the concept of

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demagogy. His thesis is: “If one is able to persuade by words in court the judges as in the assembly of the council the councilors and in the community the community men, and so in every other assembly […], then the doctor will be your servant, the gymnastic instructor your servant, and from this businessman it will be shown that he acquires for others and not for himself, but for you, who understand how to speak and to persuade the multitude” (Gorgias 452 d/e). For him, truth and justice are not decisive, but his own, useful goals. He understands rhetoric as an instrument for any purpose. However, the central themes for him are the questions of law and justice, in which he also instructs others. He is refuted by Socrates through the question of whether the one who deals with the question of justice must also know what it is. And after Gorgias has conceded this, both finally agree that the one who knows justice is also just, just as the one who has studied medicine is a physician. But the one who is just also acts justly. Gorgias agrees to this as well. But the one who acts justly can no longer want to use rhetoric for any, therefore also unjust, purpose. With that, Gorgias is refuted. In contrast to Gorgias, Polos, his student, a Sophist from Agrigentum, who also wrote a textbook on rhetoric, again represents the variant of Sophism that glorifies violence. He denies the second part of the dialogue. He represents the thesis: enviable is the “tyrant” (469 c). To be a tyrant means “that one has power in the state to do what one pleases, to kill, to banish, and to do everything according to one’s own liking” (469 c). A man who is able to do this—so his thesis—is “blessed”. As an example, he names Archelaus of Macedonia, who came to power through a series of murders, not sparing even the closest relatives. They also included a “seven-year-old child”. He had him “drowned in a well and told his mother Cleopatra that he had followed a goose and fallen in” (471 c). For Socrates, on the other hand, a person who does injustice cannot be blessed. The dispute between Polus and Socrates finally flared up over the question of whether it is better to do injustice or to suffer injustice. Since Polus admits that although injustice is uglier than suffering injustice (cf. 474 c), the good is the pleasant and the beautiful, he finally has to agree with Socrates’ thesis: injustice is, because it is uglier, also “worse than suffering injustice” (475 c). The consequence is: A tyrant cannot be blessed, and Polus is refuted. Callicles, a Sophist of the 5th century, known only from this dialogue, is not satisfied with this refutation. He brings the distinction between physis and nomos developed in Sophism into play and emphasizes: According to the laws valid in the polis, injustice is indeed uglier than suffering injustice, but “by nature” suffering injustice; for “these two are mostly opposed to each other, nature and law” (482 e).

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He explains this thesis as follows: “For by nature, everything is always the uglier, which is also the more evil, that is, the suffering of injustice, but legally it is the doing of injustice. Nor is this truly a state for a man, the suffering of injustice, but for a little slave, who would rather die than live, because he is unable to help himself or another who is worthy of him when he is insulted and reviled” (483 b). The blame for this situation lies solely with the laws agreed upon in the polis. But their creators are “the weak and the great multitude” (see quotation). Since they are not strong themselves, they seek to protect themselves from the strong by convincing them that it is unfair if one who is strong claims more for himself than all others; for “they themselves, I mean, are quite content if they receive only what is equal, since they are the worse” (483 c). For this reason, they also want to “enslave” the strong “from youth on”, as is done with the training of lions. But this does not always succeed. Occasionally one breaks loose, “tramples all our writings” and “unnatural laws” and declares himself “our lord”. For this is also the case in nature, “that the nobler has more than the worse and the more capable than the less capable”. The strong man who disregards the laws of the polis does not actually commit any injustice, for he orientates himself according to the only true one, the “law of nature” (see quotation). After this plea for the ‘right of the stronger’, SocratesCallicles points out a contradiction: If it were only a matter of strength, would one not also have to admit that “the many are stronger by nature” than “the one, since they also give the laws to the one” (488 d)? But Callicles does not allow this objection to stand. He does not understand strength in a physical sense, but as a “better” and “more worthy” (489 c). But he emphatically denies the question of Socrates, whether “betterment” also includes “self-control” and “temperance”. For him, “betterment” is associated with an unrestrained life of pleasure. No one can be happy who submits to any sort of constraint. His, the hedonism committed, justification is: “But what is beautiful and right by nature, I will tell you quite frankly, is that whoever wants to live correctly, must make his desires as great as possible and not constrain them; and then, however great they are, he must still be able to satisfy them through courage and insight, and whenever his desire is directed at anything, to satisfy it. … But most people are not able to do this, which is why they just censure such people out of shame, hiding their own inability, and say that unrestraint is something shameful, in order … to constrain those who are naturally better people; and because they themselves are not able to provide satisfaction for their own desires, they praise moderation and justice out of their own unmanliness” (491 d-492 b). By no means is the one to be called happy who has no needs, for

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then “stones” and “the dead” would be the happiest. Provoked by Socrates, he even includes “the life of pederasts” (494 e) from his thesis. The life style glorified by him corresponds to the Platodescribed psychology of tyranny: Propagated in it is the “violent desire” (see section I, 3). Kallikles is finally refuted by the reference to the logical structure of specific pairs of opposites. There are—as Socrates says—certain opposites, in which the presence of one includes the absence of the other: This is the case with health and illness, with strength and weakness, with speed and slowness and finally with good and happiness on the one hand and evil and misery on the other hand. Always, the one side of the opposition is the stronger, the weaker the other side is. If health is the greatest, illness is the furthest away, and this applies to the other pairs of opposites in the same way. From this it follows that it is impossible to identify good and pleasure; because with the opposition of pleasure and displeasure it behaves quite differently. Pleasure is then the greatest when displeasure is also the greatest. The pleasure of eating is then the greatest when hunger is the greatest, and that is the case with thirst and all other lusts as well. And that means at the same time: Displeasure decreases to the extent that it is satisfied by objects of pleasure, i.e. displeasure and pleasure cease at the same time (cf. 497 d). If, therefore, good and evil on the one hand and pleasure and displeasure have such different structures, then pleasure and good cannot be identical automatically (ibid.). Therefore, it depends—as Socrates says—to choose among the many lusts the ones that are good (cf. 500 a). However, the knowledge of good itself is necessary for this. This is the key to a happy life and not any arbitrary, unchecked pleasure. Kallikles surrenders. The reception history of these Sophists includes Machiavelli, Hobbes and Nietzsche, whose “master morality” coincides with that propagated by Kallikles. More surprising is that in the book “Paths from Utopia” by Dahrendorf a “praise of Thrasymachus” can be found. He had adequately addressed the “dialectic of domination and resistance” (Dahrendorf 1974, 313).

2 Criticism of “Class Morality” (Marx/Engels) “The thoughts of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling thoughts, i.e. the class which has the ruling material power of society is at the same time its ruling intellectual power. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, also has control over the means of intellectual production, so that in its average it subject to the thoughts of those who lack

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the means of intellectual production. The ruling thoughts are nothing more than the ideal expression of the ruling material conditions, the material conditions which make one class ruling, and therefore the thoughts of its rule. The individuals who make up the ruling class, among other things, are also conscious and therefore think; insofar as they rule as a class and determine the course of an historical epoch, it goes without saying that they do this in their totality, thus also as thinkers, as producers of thoughts, regulating the production and distribution of the thoughts of their time; so that their thoughts are the ruling thoughts of the epoch. At a time, for example, and in a country where royal power, aristocracy and bourgeoisie are fighting for mastery, and therefore rule is divided, the doctrine of the division of powers shows itself as the ruling thought, which is now expressed as an ‘eternal law.’” (Karl Marx/Friedrich Engels: The German Ideology. In: Karl Marx: Early Writings. Vol. 2. Darmstadt 1971, 55) Karl Marx is born in 1818 as the son of the lawyer Heinrich Marx in Trier. He studies law, philosophy and history in Bonn and Berlin and comes into contact with the Young Hegelians (‘Left Hegelians’), to which David Friedrich Strauss, Ludwig Feuerbach, Max Stirner and the Bruno brothers and Edgar Bauer belong. He intensively deals with the philosophy of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. In 1841 he received his doctorate in Jena with a dissertation on the topic Difference between the Democritus and Epicurus natural philosophy. Since 1842 he has been working as an editor of the ‘Rheinische Zeitung’. In 1843 Marx moved to Paris. With Arnold Ruge he published the Deutsch-Französischen Jahrbücher (German-French Yearbooks ) in 1844, but quarreled with him shortly afterwards. In the same year he met Friedrich Engels, with whom he had a lifelong friendship. In 1845 he was expelled from France at the request of the Prussian government and from then on led the restless life of an emigrant until he finally found exile in London in 1849, having become stateless in the meantime. Here his main work Das Kapital  (Capital ) was created. In London, the ‘First International’ was also founded in 1864, in which he played a leading role until its dissolution in 1873. Marx died in 1883 (cf. Blumenberg 1972; Pleger 2018, 255). The confrontation with Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel determines Marx’s thinking in a decisive way. His relationship to Hegel is characterized by fascination and criticism. He sharply criticizes his idealism. He wants to ‘stand Hegel on his head’, i.e. replace idealism with materialism. In his Ökonomischphilosophischen Manuskripten (Economic – Philosophical Manuscripts ) written in Paris in 1844, he makes this reversal clear as follows: First, he

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emphasizes the “greatness of Hegel’s ‘Phenomenology’”. It consists—according to Marx—in the fact that it “grasps the self-generation of man as a process” and “the true, because real man, as a result of his own work ”. But after this remarkable consent now follows his decisive criticism. He says: Hegel “sees only the positive side of work, not its negative […]. The work which Hegel alone knows and recognizes is the abstract spiritual ” (Marx 1971 a, 269 f.). In the place of the “work of the spirit” stands the individual human being at Marx, who deals with nature in a ‘tangible’ sense in his work. However, it is noteworthy that Marx and Hegel not only agree that they define work as the “self-generation” of man. There are three more thoughts in which Marx reveals himself as a Hegelian. First, there is the moral criticism emphasized by Hegel, secondly the replacement of ethics by philosophy of history and thirdly the determination of freedom as the goal of history. Hegel’s moral criticism is directed against the distinction between being and ought emphasized by Kant. The “moral standpoint”—according to Hegel—only has a subordinate meaning, because it is in contradiction to the external world. Morality only affects the innermost part of the subject and its “autonomy”. But by setting it absolutely, it becomes a “empty formalism ” (Hegel 1970, 252). Only when the empty determinations of morality determine reality in the form of concretely lived morality and legally binding morality, does the abstract morality acquire a concrete, namely a historical meaning (cf. Schröder 2005, 125 ff.). The place of mediation between being and ought is therefore history. According to Hegel, it is—so Hegel—to recognize that history is the field on which mediation between being and ought actually takes place. But whoever looks at history in its actual development recognizes that it is not the “ideals” , but the idea, which is synonymous with reason, that determines reality. Hegel emphasizes: “What is reasonable is real; / and what is real is reasonable” (Hegel 1970, 24). But even if the idea determines history, the means it uses are by no means reasonable. On the contrary, we must “regard history as this battlefield on which the happiness of peoples, the wisdom of states and the virtue of individuals have been sacrificed” (Hegel 1970 a, 35). The question arises, “to whom, to what end these most enormous sacrifices have been made” (ibid., 35). Hegel’s answer is: It is the realization of freedom. He says: “World history is the progress in the consciousness of freedom—a progress that we have to recognize in its necessity” (ibid., 32). Making this consciousness objective and raising it to the state principle finally took place in the French Revolution. Freedom and right were now combined and the feudal state,

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“the old framework of injustice, could no longer resist” (ibid., 529). For Hegel—in contrast to Marx—with the French Revolution history has come to its goal. It also has no further idea to realize. All other states that have not yet realized this idea will have to adopt this principle sooner or later. The leading idea for Marx is the inversion of idealism into materialism. His lowest base is nature. It is nature with which man is in constant exchange in order to survive. This exchange forms the basis of human history. He states: “But to life belongs above all eating and drinking, housing, clothing and some other things. The first historical act is therefore the production of the means of satisfaction of these needs, the production of material life itself, and this is a historical act […], which must be carried out daily and hourly even today, as it was thousands of years ago, in order to keep people alive at all” (Marx 1971, 29). Only if this fact is adequately taken into account does the “history-writing a materialistic basis” (ibid.). This inversion of the idealistic approach also has an impact on the understanding of human ideas. It is not the ideas that determine nature, man and his relationship to it beforehand, but it is the material conditions that lead to the generation of certain ideas. This means: “The production of ideas, representations, consciousness is first of all directly interwoven with the material activity and the material intercourse of men, language of real life. […] Of spiritual production, as it appears in the language of politics, laws, morality, religion, metaphysics, etc. of a people, the same applies. The people are the producers of their conceptions, ideas pp., but the real acting people, as they are conditioned by a certain development of their productive forces and the traffic corresponding to them […]. Consciousness can never be anything else than conscious being, and the being of men is their real life process” (ibid., 22f.). The thoughts of men, their ideas and representations, their laws, and their religion, their metaphysics and finally their “morality” are expressions of their real life conditions. However, what is now decisive for Marx is the question of how productive forces and production relations develop in history and what influence the development has on the production of ideas. How is history to be interpreted if one sees the production relations as their decisive basic principle in a materialistic consideration? The most historically effective answer was given by Marx in his 1848 Manifesto of the Communist Party published together with Engels. Right at the beginning of the brochure, the central thesis is stated: “The history of all previous societies is the history of class struggles” (ibid., 817). This fight did not come to an end with the French Revolution. Contrary to what Hegel thought, the rule of law did not gain validity and the idea of

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freedom did not prevail, when the feudal state was abolished. For Marx the class struggle only entered a new, but decisive phase. Has the ‘third estate’, the bourgeoisie, defeated feudalism in the French Revolution, now the ‘fourth estate’, the proletariat, fights against the bourgeoisie. Marx describes this fight as follows: “The modern bourgeois society, which has arisen from the downfall of the feudal society, has not abolished the class differences. It has only set new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in the place of the old ones./But our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, is characterized by the fact that it has simplified the class differences. The whole society splits more and more into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other: bourgeoisie and proletariat” (ibid., 818). The existence of class societies means that there is a ruling class and an oppressed class. The ruling class has a power of disposal over the means of production and thus also over the production relations. It decides what and how is produced. But since, as Marx emphasizes, the material production and the production of ideas are “intertwined” with each other to a great extent, the class that determines the material production relations also has a rule over the production of ideas, including the laws and morality. Marx brings to validity the ‘right of the stronger’ which was represented by the Sophists. However, an astonishing role reversal takes place in the process. It are now not, as the Sophist Kallikles emphasized, “the weak and the great multitude” who enact the laws and determine morality, but “the strong”, the class of the bourgeoisie, which is a minority in comparison to the proletariat. The Sophist Kallikles could be content with the class society drawn by Marx. Marx it’s not. There is another aspect that makes the comparison between the considerations of the Sophists and the class society characterized by Marx interesting. It is the theory of the internalization of moral norms described by Kritias. The morality of the rulers becomes the ruling morality when the laws and regulations enacted by the rulers are internalized by the ruled. This is exactly the thesis put forward by Marx when he says: “The thoughts of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling thoughts, i.e. the class which has the ruling material power of society is at the same time its ruling spiritual power” (see quotation). But in order to become a spiritual power, the thoughts of the ruling class must be formulated in such a way that the oppressed class does not feel them as something foreign, imposed on them. If the rulers succeed in this, they have made an idea into an ideology. Marx explains this process with an example. In a time when power was divided, “the doctrine of the separation of powers appears as the ruling thought, which is now

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expressed as an ‘eternal law’” (see quotation). The criticism of the ruling morality becomes ideology criticism. Marx assessed the social conditions of his time as deeply immoral. He characterizes them with the term “alienation” borrowed from the philosophy of Hegel (cf. Israel 1972). He distinguishes four aspects. The first includes the alienation of the worker from nature. It contains the idea that by transforming nature into products, the worker a) loses objects of future work and b) destroys nature as an immediate livelihood. The second aspect means that the worker performs his work “not voluntarily, but forced”. The third includes the alienation of the worker from his “species-being”. Through work, compulsions arise that exploit the nature of work as a “free”, “conscious” and “universal” activity on the one hand, but reverse it in its sense on the other. The fourth aspect finally consists in the alienation of man from the other man, both to the capitalist and to all other workers who are his competitors (cf. Marx 1962, 562-571). Criticism of the ruling morality is therefore criticism of alienation. Marx nevertheless refrains from merely denouncing these conditions morally (cf. Schröder 2005, 125). He reproaches the “Young Hegelians” precisely for believing that they could change the ruling conditions through mere criticism (cf. Marx 1971, 14). Criticism, even ideology criticism, is powerless. Therefore his thesis: “The weapon of criticism cannot, of course, replace the criticism of weapons, the material force must be overthrown by material force” (MEW 1, 385). After the failure of the Revolution of 1848, Marx refrained from making further political calls and instead linked his economic studies with a historical-philosophical perspective that can already be heard in the Manifest. There he had predicted to the bourgeoisie: “Your downfall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable” (ibid., 832). In his main work Das Kapital (Capital), the first volume of which appeared in 1867, Marx now developed the historical logic of this downfall. It consists in the fact that capital, due to a “constantly decreasing number of capital magnates”, concentrates. As a result, “the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, exploitation, but also the outrage of the […] united and organized working class grows. The capital monopoly becomes the fetter of the mode of production which has flourished with and under it. The centralization of the means of production and the socialization of labor reach a point where they become incompatible with their capitalist shell. It is blown up. The hour of capitalist private property strikes. The expropriators are expropriated. […] the capitalist mode of production, with the necessity of a natural process, produces its own negation” (Marx 1962 a, 926 ff.). As with Hegel, the course of history

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takes place with necessity, and, as with Hegel, freedom stands at the end of this process. But Marx distinguishes between two forms of freedom. One has its place within the realm of material production, the other, “the true realm of freedom”, lies beyond it. He begins with the first realm: “Freedom in this realm can only consist in the fact that the socialized human being, the associated producers, rationally regulate their metabolism with nature, bring it under their common control instead of being controlled by it as by a blind force; carry it out with the least possible expenditure of energy and under the most worthy and adequate conditions of their human nature. But this will always remain a realm of necessity. Beyond it begins the human development of power, which is regarded as an end in itself, the true realm of freedom, which can only flourish on that realm of necessity as its basis” (MEW 25, 828). Only in the realm of freedom is the alienation of man abolished and the claim of morality realized. This consists in the fact that the individual human being can freely develop the forces lying within him. Friedrich Engels (1820-1895) also links his criticism of morality to the criticism of social conditions. In 1844 he was in Manchester and experienced the effects of the capitalist economic system on the situation of the “working class” there. Already trade is based—according to Engels—on deception. “In trade it is allowed to take advantage of the ignorance, of the trust of the other party to the greatest possible extent, and also to attribute to one’s goods properties which they do not possess. With one word, trade is legal fraud” (MEW 1, 503). The examples could be extended. The landowner “robs by monopolizing the land” and taking away the economic basis from the rural population. For Engels, it is a sign of the “immorality” of society to “mortgage the earth, which is our one and all” (ibid., 510f.). But the “factory system” has a truly catastrophic effect on the family. It destroys its structure by “undermining the last trace of common interests, the community of goods of the family”. Engels states: “It is quite commonplace that children, as soon as they are of working age, i.e. nine years old, use their wages for themselves, see their parents’ house as a mere boarding house and pay their parents a certain amount for food and lodging” (ibid., 505). In his study The Condition of the Working Class in England from 1845, Engels characterizes the social situation as follows: There is the “social war”, i.e. “that the stronger tramples the weaker underfoot and that the few strong, that is to say the capitalists, everything to themselves, while the many weak, the poor, hardly the bare life remains” (MEW 2, 257). For the worker there is the following alternative: “If he is lucky enough to get work, […] then he awaits a wage which is barely enough to keep body and soul

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together; if he does not get work, he can steal, if he does not fear the police, or starve, and the police will also take care here that he starves in a quiet way, which does not hurt the bourgeoisie” (ibid., 258). But Engels does not argue from the position of a universally valid ethic. In his book Anti-Dühring he deals with the philosophy of Eugen Karl Dühring (1833-1921), a German positivist and national economist. Engels develops his own approach to ethics there. He emphasizes the relativity of morality in historical and social terms and notes that on the field of morality, which is part of “human history”, “the final truths of last resort are sown particularly thinly” (MEW 20, 86). “From people to people, from age to age, the ideas of good and evil have changed so much that they often contradict each other” (ibid.). At his time, three morals could be distinguished: Firstly, there are the “Christian-feudal” with their numerous confessional variants, secondly the “modern-bourgeois” and thirdly the “proletarian future morality”. None of them can claim truth “in the sense of absolute finality” for itself. However, the proletarian contains the “most promising, elements”, since it represents “the upheaval of the present” and thus the future. But Engels goes one step further. The three mentioned morals represent, in his opinion, “the three classes of modern society, the feudal aristocracy, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat”. This means that “people, consciously or unconsciously, derive their moral views ultimately from the practical conditions in which their class position is based—from the economic conditions in which they produce and exchange” (ibid., 87). However, since these three classes form a historical continuum, it is not surprising that there are similarities between them. This means: “For equal or approximately equal economic development stages, moral theories must more or less agree” (ibid.). This is the case, for example, with the moral commandment associated with the formation of private property: “Thou shalt not steal”. But this commandment does not apply “eternally”, for example not in a future society in which private property is abolished. “In a society where the motives for stealing are eliminated, where only the mentally ill can still be stolen from time to time, the moral preacher would be laughed at who solemnly proclaimed the eternal truth: Thou shalt not steal!” (ibid.). But in the present we are—according to Engels—not yet beyond class morality. “A morality standing above class antagonisms and above the memory of them, a really human morality, will only be possible on a level of society that has not only overcome class antagonisms, but has also forgotten them for the practice of life” (ibid., 88). Marx and Engels differ in their criticism of morality in an important point: While for Marx the prevailing

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morality is always the morality of the ruling class, for Engels every class has itsown morality. The history of reception of the moral criticism of Marx and Engels is connected with the concept of ideology criticism. This is clearly the case with Theodor W. Adorno (Adorno 1969). Karl Mannheim connects the thought of the social conditioning of morality in the sense of Engels with the thesis of the “connectedness of being” of thinking (Mannheim 2015). Francis Fukuyamafinally sees with Hegel and against Marx and Engels, after the end of communism, in liberal democracy a “realm of freedom” (Fukuyama 1992).

3 Critique of the “Slave Morality” (Nietzsche) “There is master-morality and slave-morality […]. The moral value distinctions have either arisen under a ruling class which became aware of its difference to the ruled class with a sense of well-being,—or under the ruled, the slaves and dependents of every degree: In the first case, if it is the ruling who determine the concept of ‘good’, then it is the elevated, proud states of mind which are experienced as distinguishing and determining the hierarchy. The noble man separates beings from himself to whom the opposite of such elevated, proud states is expressed: he despises them. […] It is different with the second type of morality, the slave-morality. Suppose that the raped, oppressed, suffering, unfree, self-uncertain and tired moralize: what will the similarity of their moral value judgments be? Probably a pessimistic suspicion against the whole situation of man will be expressed, perhaps a condemnation of man together with his situation. The slave’s view is unfavorable to the virtues of the powerful: he has skepticism and mistrust, he has subtlety of mistrust against everything ‘good’ that is honored there—he would like to convince himself that even happiness is not genuine there. On the other hand, the properties are brought to the fore and flooded with light which serve to make the existence of the suffering easier: here compassion, the obliging helpful hand, the warm heart, patience, diligence, humility, friendliness are honored—because these are the most useful properties and almost the only means to endure the pressure of existence. The slave morality is essentially utilitarian morality.” (Friedrich Nietzsche: Beyond Good and Evil. In: The same.: Complete Works. Critical Edition. Vol. 5. Munich 1980, 208f. and 211)

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Friedrich Nietzsche is born in 1844 in Röcken near Lützen (Saxony). In 1864 he began his studies of theology and classical philology in Bonn and continued them in Leipzig. He reads Arthur Schopenhauer’s main work The World as Will and Representation and is very impressed by him. In 1868 he meets Richard Wagner. In 1869 he is appointed to an extraordinary professorship for classical philology in Basel. In 1870 he voluntarily takes part as a sick nurse in the Franco-German War and falls ill. In 1872 his work The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music appears. For health reasons, he has to give up his teaching in 1879. Nietzsche now lives mainly in Northern Italy. In 1883 the first part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra appears, in 1886 Beyond Good and Evil and in 1887 the Genealogy of Morals. In 1889 his mental breakdown occurs in Turin. He first comes to the mental hospital in Basel, then to Jena. From 1890 his mother takes care of him until her death, from 1897 his sister. Nietzsche dies in 1900 in Weimar (cf. Frenzel 1980; Gerhardt 1992; Ross 1997/1998; Pleger 2018, 203-206). Nietzsche, like Marx, belongs to the post-idealist era. For both of them, the criticism of religion is the starting point of their own theoretical efforts. For both of them, religion is a false consciousness that is to be dissolved by means of ideological criticism. While for Marx the criticism of religion directly leads to social criticism according to Feuerbach, for Nietzsche, D. F. Strauss’s work The Life of Jesus (1835), which reduced Christianity to a myth (cf. Löwith 1988, 416), is the decisive turning point. But despite these apparent similarities, for Nietzsche, who grew up in a religious atmosphere as the son of a pastor, the “death of God” is at stake more than for Marx. For him it is the occasion for a radical existential doubt with regard to all previously valid “values”, the value of truth as well as the value of morality. After the “death of God”, man looks into an abyss, into a nothing. With it begins the age of nihilism. A first philosophical reorientation beyond religion was offered by Schopenhauer, whose work Nietzsche became acquainted with in 1865 and which fascinated him with its pessimism (Frenzel 1980, 28). Schopenhauer distinguishes, similarly to Kant, the thing-in-itself from the realm of appearance. For him, however, the thing-in-itself is the world, the character of which is a blind will. The appearances, to which the representations refer, are objectifications of the will. Objectifications are also individuations of the will, which we intuitively recognize in our own body perception. The objectifications of the will take place on ever higher levels, from the heavenly bodies to the most individual forms of consciousness. They are guided by the

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self-preservation drive. However, this puts them in opposition to each other and in a struggle with each other. The result of the struggle of individuals against each other is suffering. The avoidance of suffering is only possible through the abandonment of the principii individuationis, the principle of individuality. Schopenhauer names three ways for this: aesthetics, ethics and asceticism. In the disinterested contemplation of a work of art, especially in listening to music, there is a temporary abandonment of the will. In ethics, it is the principles of justice and compassion that achieve the same. Justice means not harming (neminem laede). In particular, however, compassion not only ends the struggle between individuals, but also completely abolishes their difference. Compassion causes the human being “no longer to make the egoistic difference between his person and the foreign one, but to take as much interest in the sufferings of other individuals as in his own” (Schopenhauer 1991, 488). The third way is determined by asceticism, i.e. resignation. This means: “The will now turns away from life; it now shudders at the pleasures in which it recognizes their affirmation. The human being comes to the state of voluntary renunciation, resignation, true serenity and complete will-lessness” (ibid., 488f.). In his confrontation with Schopenhauer, Nietzsche develops his own philosophy. The concepts of will, individuality, life, compassion and asceticism become leading themes in it. But the way in which they are discussed changes. The still pronounced adoration of Schopenhauer in his book Unzeitgemäße Betrachtungen (Untimely Considerations ) from 1873 turns into decided opposition. He interprets all of his central concepts anew, namely in relation to him in the exact opposite sense. In place of resignation, life-affirmation steps forward, in place of the negation of the will, the will to power, in place of the cancellation of the principii individuationis, the principle of individuality, and finally, in place of compassion, the propagation of hardness towards oneself and others. For him, the will to power and life form an indivisible unity. He says: “Where I found something living, there I also found the will to power; and even in the will of the servant, I found the will to be master […] Only where there is life, is there also will; but not the will to life, rather—as I teach you—the will to power” (Nietzsche 1980, 4, 147ff.). Not only do the will to power and life form a unity, they are also both ontologically founded. Life is not only a biological, but above all an ontological category. He says: “Being—we have no other concept of it than ‘life’.—How can something dead ‘be’?” (Nietzsche III, 483). It follows that, since everything is alive, there can be no will to life, but only a will of life. The same ontological foundation applies to the will to power. He says: Every “atom acts outwards into the whole of being,—it is done away with

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when one takes away this radiation of will to power. Therefore I call it a quantum ‘will to power’ ” (Nietzsche 1980, 13, 258). This makes it clear that for Nietzsche, the ‘will to power’ becomes the basis of a world view of its own. He formulates its principle as follows: “This world is the will to power -and nothing besides! And you yourselves are this will to power—and nothing besides!” (Nietzsche III, 917). For him, the will to power becomes the guideline for a “revaluation” of the values valid up to now. Nietzsche’s task is to newly justify morality. But for this it is above all necessary to destroy the existing one. Only a radical critique of morality creates the freedom for the creation of “new values”. The abolition of the claim of the hitherto valid morality succeeds—according to Nietzsche—above all by uncovering its historical conditioning. Nietzsche therefore develops the program of a ‘genealogy of morality’ (cf. Schröder 2005, 31ff.). It is a history of decline. The first stage is the ancient ethics of nobility (cf. MacIntyre 1995, 13-21). In it, the “master morality” (see quote) prevails. The values of an “aristocratic community” are decisive here, as represented, for example, by the “ancient Greek polis”. The values result from the struggle for self-assertion in a hostile environment. This struggle takes the form of either a “voluntary or involuntary event for the purpose of breeding ” (Nietzsche 1980, 5, 214). “There are people together and dependent on each other who want to assert their kind, mostly because they have to assert themselves or are in danger of being exterminated. […] in the constant struggle with the neighbors or with the rebellious or with those oppressed who are threatening to revolt. The most diverse experience teaches them which properties they owe primarily to the fact that, despite all gods and men, they are still there, that they have still prevailed: they call these virtues, they alone cultivate them great. She does it with hardness, yes she wants the hardness; every aristocratic morality is intolerant, in the education of the young, in the disposal of the women, in the marital customs, in the relationship between old and young, in the penal laws” (ibid., 214f.; cf. Jodl o. J., II, 466). The aristocrats, i.e. the “noblemen”, orient themselves to the difference between “good” and “bad”. Good is “distinguished”, “noble”, “mentally high-minded”, “mentally privileged”; bad, on the other hand, is “common”, “vulgar” and “low” (ibid., 261). However, the morality of the aristocrats is different, depending on whether it is a matter of the “inter pares” relationship or of the one towards strangers. Towards each other they are “inventive in terms of consideration, self-control, tenderness, loyalty, pride and friendship” (ibid., 274). But towards strangers they are “not much better than unleashed beasts of prey. They enjoy the freedom from all social compulsion

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there, they make up for the tension that a long imprisonment and enclosure in the peace of the community gives them, they step back into the innocence of the beast of prey conscience, as rejoicing monsters, which may be carried away by an atrocious succession of murder, arson, rape, torture with exuberance and mental balance, as if only a student prank had been carried out” (ibid., 274f.). As evidence for his thesis, Nietzsche points to the funeral speech of Thucydides reported by Pericles, in which he highlights the ‘carelessness’ of the Athenians in war, “their indifference and contempt for security, body, life, comfort, their terrible cheerfulness and depth of pleasure in all destruction, in all lusts of victory and cruelty” (ibid., 275; cf. Thucydides o. J., 146). The second stage of morality represents a reversal of the “master morality.” It is the morality of the weak and oppressed, those who cannot defend themselves against the violence inflicted upon them and who therefore seek “compensation through imaginary revenge” (Nietzsche 1980, 5, 270). They develop against the ruling class a “ressentiment.” With them begins the “slave uprising in morality” (ibid., 270). They replace in slave morality the opposition of “good and bad” for the aristocratic morality’s opposition of “good and evil.” While the former is identical to the opposition of “’noble’ and ‘contemptible,’” slave morality reverses this opposition. Evil is now what is noble, what is strong, what is fearsome, what is harsh. Good, on the other hand, is “pity, the obliging helpful hand, the warm heart, patience, diligence, humility, the friendliness” (see quotation). Where and how did this reversal of values come about? Nietzsche’s answer is: “It was the Jews who, with a fearsome consistency, dared to reverse [the aristocratic value equation] (good = noble = powerful = beautiful = happy = loved by God) and, with the teeth of the most profound hatred (the hatred of powerlessness), held fast to its opposite, namely, ‘the wretched are alone the good, the poor, the powerless, the lowly are alone the good, the suffering, the deprived, the sick, the ugly are also the only pious, the only ones who love God […] but as for you, you noble and powerful ones, you will forever be the evil, the cruel, the lustful, the insatiable, the godless, you will also forever be the unhappy, the cursed, and the damned!’” (ibid., 267). Christianity adopted this morality from the Jews. The victory of slave morality over master morality took place in Roman-occupied “Judea.” Christianity was able to spread throughout the Roman Empire. The “symbol of this struggle, which remained legible throughout human history, is ‘Rome against Judea, Judea against Rome’:—there has never been a greater event than this struggle” (ibid., 286). The Jews were enemies of the Romans who called their aristocratic morality into question. And although the

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Romans were “the strong and the noble,” Rome was ultimately “undoubtedly defeated.” The victory was achieved by “three Jews […] and one Jewess,” namely, “Jesus of Nazareth, the fisherman Peter, the carpet weaver Paul, and the mother of the aforementioned Jesus, called Mary” (ibid., 287). In the meantime, they are now bowed down to “not only in Rome, but almost on half the earth, wherever man has become tame or wants to become tame” (ibid.). But how could the morality of slaves achieve victory? This happened with the help of the rule of priests. It is the “ascetic priest” who fulfills an “enormous historical mission.” “The rule over sufferers is his realm, to which his instinct points him, in which he has his own art, his mastery, his kind of happiness” (ibid., 372). His art consists in the promise to heal the wounds, misfortune, and suffering of people. But he doesn’t heal simply. In reality, he proceeds much more cleverly. “He brings ointments and balms with him, there is no doubt; but first he needs to wound, to be a doctor; by then soothing the pain that the wound makes, he poisons the wound at the same time—that’s what this magician and beast-tamer is especially good at, in whose sphere everything healthy necessarily becomes sick and everything sick necessarily becomes tame” (ibid., 373). Once the general state of suffering has become the norm, the priest has already won his game. The relationship between priest and flock is created. The sufferer turns to the priest. He says: “‘I suffer: someone must be to blame for it’—that’s what every sickly sheep thinks. But his shepherd, the ascetic priest, says to him: ‘Right you are, my sheep! Someone must be to blame for it: but you yourself are this someone, you yourself are solely to blame for it,—you are solely to blame for yourself! ’” (ibid., 375). With this strategy, the priest has achieved the conditions for his further activity and for the increase of his power. It is the generation of a bad conscience. Nietzsche emphasizes: “I take the bad conscience as the deep illness” (ibid., 321). It arises when, under the pressure of the slave morality that has come to power, people are no longer allowed to direct their aggressions outward. “All instincts that are not discharged outward turn inward—that is what I call the internalization of man: only then does what is later called his ‘soul’ grow on him” (ibid., 322). This happened in the long process of domestication of man in the age of Christianity. Nietzsche paints a picture of the misery of Christianity using drastic colors. The morality that, with the help of priests who interpret themselves as the “good shepherds”, has become a “herd morality” has fundamentally raped man. All of man’s original, natural drives fell victim to it. They include “hostility, cruelty, the pleasure of persecution, of assault, of change, of

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destruction” (ibid., 323). What is the result? “The man who, lacking external enemies and resistance, imprisoned himself in the oppressive narrowness and regularity of custom, impatiently tore himself apart, pursued, devoured, disturbed, abused, battered himself against the bars of his cage, the animal that one wants to ‘tame’, this deprived and desert-weary creature […] this fool, this longing and desperate prisoner became the inventor of the ‘bad conscience’” (ibid., 323). In his work The Antichrist Nietzsche accuses Christianity and the Church as the originators of this situation. He says: “I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great innermost corruption, the one great instinct of revenge, for which no poison is too small, no secret, no subterranean, small enough—I call it the one immortal blot on humanity […]” (Nietzsche 1980, 6, 253). Meanwhile, however—so Nietzsche—the Church has lost influence. Even faith is fading. Among the educated, atheism is spreading, which replaces belief in God with belief in science. They are all the hard-working scientific workers who believe in the progress of humanity in the name of positivism. They are also representatives of the “ascetic ideal”, now in the name of science (Nietzsche 1980, 5, 396f.). Nietzsche does not want to be compared with these people. He pours scorn on them. More disturbing for him are the political changes in Europe, above all the development of democratic societies. But what is generally perceived as progress is, for him, a fate, because “the democratic movement makes the inheritance of the Christian” (ibid., 125). They take over their inheritance in the name of equality. But these “levelers” thereby ignore the fundamental principle of a “master morality”, which consists in the “rank difference” of values and people, of the “noble” and the “low”, of the “strong” and the “weak”. What these “slaves of democratic taste” want to achieve is the abolition of these natural differences. “What they want with all their might is the general green pasture happiness of the herd, with security, safety, comfort, relief of life for everyone; their two most sung songs and teachings are ‘equality of rights’ and ‘compassion for all sufferers’—and suffering itself is something they want to abolish ” (ibid., 61). The “democratic movement of Europe” is spreading more and more. But this also makes a dialectic of progress possible, to which Nietzsche’s hope is directed. He says: “The same new conditions under which, on average, an equalization and moderation of man will develop—a useful, workable, multi-purpose and intelligent herd animal man—are in the highest degree conducive to giving rise to exceptional men of the most dangerous and attractive quality” (ibid., 183), because the increasing number of “will-less” workers will “need the Lord, the commander like the daily bread; while thus

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the democratization of Europe leads to the creation of a type prepared for slavery in the finest sense: in the individual and exceptional case, the strong man will have to become stronger and richer than he has ever been before […]. I wanted to say: the democratization of Europe is at the same time an involuntary event for the breeding of tyrants;—the word in every sense understood, also in the spiritual sense” (ibid.). The task of the “new philosophers” is to investigate the conditions under which such “exceptional men”, “tyrants” and “leaders” can arise. Nietzsche addresses the “free spirit” of these “new philosophers” when he says: “The image of such leaders is what hovers in front of our eyes” (ibid., 126). The chance of its realization grows with a new “revaluation of values”, i.e. with the rediscovery of the former “master morality”. But with the recognition of the “necessity of such leaders” is connected “the terrible danger that they may fail or degenerate” (ibid., 127). And while on the one hand it becomes increasingly clear “how man is still unexploited for the greatest possibilities”, on the other hand there is the danger of the “general degeneration of man, down to what today appears to the socialist blockheads and flatheads as their ‘man of the future’,—as their ideal!—this degeneration and diminution of man to the perfect herd animal” (ibid., 127). Nietzsche’s reception history has not been straightforward. His philosophical work is only occasionally received and criticized in the 19th century, by Lou Andreas-Salomé (Andreas-Salomé 2000) or by Ferdinand Tönnies (Tönnies 1990). At the beginning of the 20th century, a phase of ideological appropriation began, which reached its peak in National Socialism. These attempts found real points of contact in Nietzsche’s concept of a ‘master morality’ and in the book Der Wille zur Macht (Will to Power ) edited by Nietzsche’s sister. It is true: The “violent phrases of his moral criticism” have “created a barbaric mood that favored the rise of Hitler” (Gerhardt 1992, 220). In parallel, a professional philosophical reception took place. Nietzsche was interpreted in the context of the history of metaphysics. To be mentioned would be Karl Löwith (1935), Karl Jaspers (1936) and Martin Heidegger (1936 ff.). With them, the ideological aspects of Nietzsche’s work were largely ignored. This also applies to philosophical interpretations in the second half of the 20th century. However, it would be appropriate to relate both aspects of his thinking. In French philosophy, the aspects of life philosophy had a considerable impact.

X Between Ideology and Reason—On Political Ethics

Political ethics refers to the public space, i.e. to the state and society. The question of public opinion formation and the question of citizen participation play an important role in it. Its topics include all problems that require legal regulation. Three problem areas will be discussed below. First, it is the political constitution of the state, secondly the national and international economic order and finally, thirdly, the global problem of an increasingly technicized life; problem areas therefore, because in them political reason has to assert itself against the dangers of ideology. The term ideology has a specific meaning in each of them. Totalitarianism, according to the words of Hannah Arendt, is “ideology” in the sense of a “world view” that claims to “have the key to all events in the world” (Arendt 1995, 708). The two prevailing ideologies of the 20th century were Communism and National Socialism. Their leaders, Stalinand Hitler, fascinated the masses because they claimed to lead them in a victorious struggle against life-threatening “elements”. In Communism these were the bourgeois class, in National Socialism above all the “Jewish race”. Arendt points out, taking into account all the differences in practice, commonalities of both ideologies. These consist firstly in the fact that, in comparison to the historically familiar forms of dictatorship, they are “totalitarian”. This means that in them the difference between a public and a private sphere is abolished and they permeate all areas of life. Secondly, both imprisoned their opponents in concentration camps, the degree of cruelty of which, however, differed greatly in both totalitarian areas of rule. Arendt sees the means

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against the still existing dangers of a new totalitarianism in the strengthening of a democratic public sphere, in which alone political freedom can develop. A different form of ideology is represented by a neoliberal capitalism that is now operating globally and spreading the illusion that the production and consumption it has set in motion leads to general prosperity. The originator of this ideology is Adam Smith (1723-1790), who put forward the thesis that in a “free economy”, in which everyone only cares for his own welfare, nevertheless, as if “invisible hand” guided, also the common good would be strengthened, and that more securely than if everyone were to take care of it directly. The economist and Nobel laureate Friedrich August von Hayek has adopted this ideology. He pleads for a market free from all state interventions. But above all, he is opposed to an, in his opinion, excessive “welfare state” that limits the activities of entrepreneurs. A rationality-oriented ethics would have to make it clear, however, that only an internationally coordinated policy can tame the global power of capitalism. The third form of ideology represents an “unleashed technology” that Hans Jonas addresses. It starts with Francis Bacon (1561-1626), who, based on empirical and experimental knowledge, developed the utopia of total control of nature. In the meantime, in the course of the industrial revolution, this control has been extended to such an extent that it encompasses the entire earth, as the report of the “Club of Rome” impressively demonstrates (see Meadows 1974). It has not only led to an excessive destruction of nature, but has also made man himself an object of technical disposal power. This catastrophic development can only be reversed, according to Jonas, if man learns again to respect the “inherent dignity of nature”. In order to achieve this, the development of a responsibility ethic is necessary, which not only investigates the enormous, so far barely assessable, long-term effects of technology, but also advocates that everything be omitted that endangers the existence of mankind.

1 Totalitarianism and Democracy (Arendt) “In the contempt of the totalitarian rulers for positive law, an inhuman loyalty is expressed, for which people are only the material on which the superhuman laws of nature and history are carried out and which means here in the most terrible sense of the word executed. This execution of the objective laws of nature and history is finally supposed to produce a mankind—be it a racial society or a classless and nationless society—which is in itself only the

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exponent of the laws which are realized in it, which it otherwise would only passively, full of resistance and never completely suffer . […] The essence of totalitarian rule in this sense is terror, which is not carried out arbitrarily and not according to the rules of the power hunger of an individual (as in tyranny), but in accordance with superhuman processes and their natural or historical laws. As such, it replaces the fence of the law, within the confines of which people can move freely, with an iron band that stabilizes people so that any free, unpredictable action is excluded. […] A discussion with supporters of totalitarian movements about freedom is so extraordinarily unproductive because they are not only not interested in human freedom, that is, in the freedom of human action, but they consider it dangerous for the liberation of natural or historical processes.” (Hannah Arendt: Elements and Origins of Totalitarianism. Munich 1995, 706 and 711) Hannah Arendt is born in 1906 in Hanover. From 1924 to 1928 she studies philosophy, theology and Greek with Heideggerand Bultmann in Marburg and philosophy with Husserl in Freiburg. In 1928 she is awarded a doctorate in Heidelberg by Jaspers with her dissertation Der Liebesbegriff bei Augustinus (Love and Saint Augustine ). In 1933 she is temporarily arrested by the Gestapo. Afterwards she flees to Paris. In 1937 her German citizenship is revoked. From 1938 to 1939 she works for the ‘Jewish Agency’ in Paris. This is followed by a temporary arrest in the internment camp in Gurs (southern France) in 1940. In 1941 she is allowed to emigrate to the USA. From 1941 to 1944 she is an employee of the German-Jewish weekly newspaper Aufbau (Construction) in New York and from 1946 to 1949 chief editor in the Schocken-Verlag. In 1951 she receives American citizenship. In the same year her much-noticed book The Origins of Totalitarianism 1955 and in 1958 her philosophical main work The Human Condition (Eng. Vita activa or from the active life, 1960) appear. From 1963 to 1967 she is professor at the University of Chicago. She sympathizes with the civil rights and student movement, criticizes the Vietnam War and supports the ‘Black Power Movement’ (cf. Heuer 1987, 67). From 1967 to 1975 she is professor of philosophy at the ‘New School for Social Research’ in New York. She dies in New York in 1975 (cf. Young-Bruehl 1991, Heuer 1987). That Arendt was to become an important representative of political philosophy of the 20th century was not foreseeable at the time of her dissertation, “which was as resolutely abstract as apolitical and atheological” (Young-Bruehl 1991, 662). The confrontation with political questions

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became unavoidable for her, who had paid little attention to her Jewish origin until then, only through the historical situation. A first attempt at this confrontation is her book Rahel Varnhagen. Life story of a German Jew from the Romantic period. The consequences of European, and especially German, anti-Semitism, which “had offended her sense of justice and freedom” (Heuer 1987, 25), led her to a theoretical and political commitment to the cause of the Jews and, more fundamentally, to a reflection on the conditions of political freedom. For her, anti-Semitism is an expression of a totalitarian ideology. The field of politics, on the other hand, represents a dimension for her in which people can freely negotiate their way of life. Totalitarianism and politics relate to each other like ideology and reason. The most comprehensive attempt at this is her work Elements and Origins of Totalitarianism. It consists of three parts: “Antisemitism”, “Imperialism” and “Totalitarianism”. In the first part, Arendt develops the thesis that European antisemitism did not develop as a result of growing nationalism and strengthened Judaism, but on the contrary, in a phase of decline of nationalism and weakened Judaism (cf. Arendt 1995, 26ff.). Arendt concludes this part of her book with the analysis of the “Dreyfus Affair”, which shook the French Republic to its foundations (cf. ibid., 163-206). Imperialism, “which emerged from colonialism”, is dealt with in the second part. Its epoch can be dated quite precisely. It began with the “economic and industrial development in the last third of the 19th century, which made the nation state system obsolete” (ibid., 209). Its final phase began, however, with the “Independence Declaration of India” in 1947. After that, “the other European nations could no longer hold on to their overseas territories” (ibid.). The final point was France’s withdrawal from Algeria. In the third part she deals with totalitarianism as an ideology of total domination. In contrast to the classical forms of political rule of tyranny and dictatorship, which are content with “destroying the political sphere of human beings” (ibid., 727), totalitarian rule is “truly total” because it “spans the private-social life of those subjected to it in the iron bond of terror” (ibid.; cf. Lieber 2000, 883). Arendt discusses these ideologies using the example of National Socialism and Bolshevism. In contrast to well-known modern dictatorships, in which rule was achieved through violence, the two new, totalitarian forms of rule are characterized by the fact that their leaders, Hitlerand Stalin, had the majority of the population behind them. This is even a condition of totalitarian rule. She emphasizes: “Total rule is not possible without a mass movement and without the support of the masses terrorized by it. Hitler’s seizure of power was legal according to all the rules of democratic constitution; he was the leader of by far the largest party, which

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only lacked an absolute majority” (ibid., 496). The same applies to the Soviet Union. The “Moscow Trials” were only possible because “the masses were behind Stalin”. The popularity of these “leaders” is by no means the result of clever propaganda; for although it is “dishonest”, it is by no means “secretive”. Rather, “totalitarian leaders […] usually begin their careers by boasting of their past crimes with incomparable openness and ‘predicting’ their future ones with incomparable accuracy” (ibid., 497). They rely on the fact that this violence will be received by the masses with an “admiring expression” (ibid.). This initially difficult to understand consent to violence does not by any means only affect the lower classes; because “the attraction of mass movements had an effect on the European educated aristocracy at least as strong as on all other layers of the population; sometimes it almost seems as if it is precisely the actual elite of European culture that is particularly susceptible to the peculiar self-forgetfulness and the abandonment of individual peculiarity that takes place in mass movements. […] The main feature of individuals in a mass society is not brutality or stupidity or ignorance, but contactlessness and uprootedness” (ibid., 512f.). Masses arise when a politically structured public, which articulates its interests in associations and parties, disintegrates. The masses are formed by people who are “politically indifferent” and therefore “equally hostile to all parties” (ibid., 503). Arendt sees the beginning of the politically amorphous masses with the “collapse of class society, which was the only social and political structuring of the nation-states” (ibid., 505). This collapse took place in Germany after the First World War (cf. ibid.). But mass society is by no means only a phenomenon of modern, Western industrial society. “How much the peculiar individualization and atomization of modern mass society is necessary to make totalitarian rule possible at all can best be seen by comparing Nazism with Bolshevism, which arose under the most disparate historical and social circumstances, only to end in a astonishing similarity of rule and institutions” (ibid., 515). Totalitarian movements aim at world domination. This applies to National Socialism as well as to Bolshevism. The one does it in the name of race, the other in the name of class. The one offers nature the explanatory pattern, the other history. People are only the “material”, “on which the superhuman laws of nature and history are carried out” (see quotation). The “most consistent institution” of total domination are the concentration camps. In them, totalitarianism finds its most decisive, contemptuous expression towards humanity. However, they did not originate from totalitarian movements. “They first appear at the beginning of the century during

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the Boer War and were then used further in South Africa and India for ‘undesirable elements’” (ibid., 679). In Russia, they date back to the “end of the 1920s, where until 1930 the majority of the concentration camp population still consisted of criminals, counterrevolutionaries and ‘politicals’ […]” (ibid., 690). In contrast, the “turn to the actually totalitarian-run concentration camp with its enormous predominance of completely ‘innocent’ inmates did not take place in Germany until 1938” (ibid.). There were different types and a different organizational structure of the camps in Germany and in Russia. The following picture applies to Russia: “First, there are real forced labor colonies that live in relative freedom and are only sentenced for a limited time. Secondly, there are concentration camps in which the human material is ruthlessly exploited and the death rate is extraordinarily high, but which are essentially also assembled for labor purposes. And thirdly, there are extermination camps in which the inmates are systematically exterminated by hunger and neglect” (ibid., 682). The number of people who fell victim to Stalin’s  terror in total is enormous. Arendt explains “the enormous extent of the crimes” as follows: “In addition to the estimated 9-12 million victims of the first five-year plan (19281933), one must also add the victims of the Great Purge: 3 million were estimated to have been executed, 5-9 million deported. […] However, all these estimates seem to fall short of the actual numbers” (ibid., 481f., note; cf. Courtois et al. 1999, 229f.). In the end, Stalin combined class with racial issues. Among the victims of his terror were, due to an increasing antisemitism in Russia, also the “Jewish-bourgeois” elements, who were first accused of “Zionism”, then of “cosmopolitanism”. The accusation “held closer and closer to the Nazi model of a Jewish world conspiracy in the sense of the Wise of Zion” (ibid., 494). In Germany, too, the inmates were divided into categories that formed a hierarchy. They were, read from top to bottom: “Criminals, political, asocial, religious and Jews, who were identified by badges” (ibid., 691). Despite all the fluctuations in the classification in detail, it was clear that “the Jews were once and for all […] the lowest category” (ibid.). But even for criminals, the concentration camp is not a prison sentence. They were only admitted to the camps after they had served their sentence (cf. ibid., 687); i.e. they were innocent in the legal sense. This is all the more true for all inmates who were to be “exterminated” for ideological reasons anyway. This means: “The gas chambers were never intended as a deterrent or as a punishment; they were intended for Jews or Gypsies or Poles ‘in general’, and they ultimately served as proof that people are superfluous in general” (ibid., 690; cf. Kogon n.d., 179). The extermination camps were factories of death. The physical

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destruction was preceded by the legal and moral destruction of the person. The legal one meant that their legal capacity was denied and with it the possibility to defend themselves in court; the moral one in that their murder left no traces, as if they had never existed. The aim was to destroy the chance of remembrance and memory of them as completely as possible. This means: “The insane mass production of corpses precedes the historically and politically understandable preparation living corpses” (ibid., 686). Even the term “forced labor camp” common in the Soviet Union cannot disguise the fact that in reality they were also death camps, to which a “planned regulation of the death rate” belonged (ibid., 684). Nevertheless, there are great differences between the Soviet and the German concentration camps. Arendt tries to make them clearer with the image of the mythical concepts of “Hades”, “Purgatory” and “Hell”. She says: “Hades would correspond to those relatively mild forms of neglectful removal, which were in danger of becoming fashionable for unwanted elements of all kinds—refugees, stateless persons, asocials, unemployed—also in non-totalitarian states […]. Purgatory is represented in those alleged work camps of the Soviet Union, in which neglect was combined with chaotic work compulsion. Hell finally in the literal sense of the word are those types that were only developed by the Nazis to perfection, in which the whole life was systematically organized according to the principle of the greatest possible torture systematically organized” (ibid., 684f.). There is no doubt that “Stalinlike Hitler were ideologues of the first order” who mobilized the masses with their propaganda. The question is whether their death has banished the danger of totalitarian rule. Arendt’s answer is ambivalent. On the one hand, a decisive prerequisite has not changed: the situation of the “modern” human being. Arendt remarks: “What drives modern human beings so easily into totalitarian movements and prepares them so well for totalitarian rule is the increasing loneliness everywhere” (ibid., 729). On the other hand, she is hopeful. There is no predetermined course of history. With every human being there is the possibility of a new beginning. “This beginning is always and everywhere there and ready. Its continuity cannot be interrupted, because it is guaranteed by the birth of every human being” (ibid., 730). Her book Eichmann in Jerusalem. A report on the banality of evil (1963) contains a report on the trial and the characterization of a human being who, as a representative of the totalitarian Nazi ideology, was responsible for the organization of the extermination of the inmates of the German concentration camps. She makes it clear that a person who is responsible for the murder of millions does not have to be a “monster” at all, but a quite

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“normal” human being. Arendt uses this term in reference to a formulation by Jaspers (cf. Arendt/Jaspers 1993, 99) “the banality of evil”. Eichmann, who had been heavily incriminated in the Nuremberg war crimes trial in 1946, managed to flee to Italy with the help of a secret organization of former SS members, where in May 1950 “a Franciscan father, who was well informed about his identity, equipped him with a refugee passport in the name Richard Klement and sent him on to Buenos Aires” (Arendt 2016, 351). Here he was tracked down by the Jewish secret service in May 1960, brought to Israel and imprisoned. The trial against him began on April 11, 1961. In the police interrogation Eichmann, Adolf showed himself to be extremely talkative, but in the trial he referred to the charges against him as “innocent”. Arendt reports his defense as follows: “What he had done, he had done according to his own conscience as a law-abiding citizen. He had done his duty, as he assured tirelessly in the police interrogation and in court, he had not only obeyed orders, he had also followed the law ” (ibid., 231). Already during the interrogations he had “emphasized with great emphasis” that he had “followed the moral principles of Kant throughout his life, and had acted above all in the sense of Kant’s concept of duty” (ibid., 232). However, he then explained that when he was commissioned to carry out the “final solution”, he had “stopped living according to Kantian principles”, because he knew that he could “no longer remain ‘master of myself ’” (ibid.). Arendt describes her horror at the “banality of evil” embodied in the person of Eichmann as follows: “What was disturbing about Eichmann’s person was precisely that he was like many, and that these many were neither perverse nor sadistic, but terribly and frighteningly normal, and are. From the standpoint of our legal institutions and our moral standards of judgment, this normality was much more frightening than all the atrocities put together, because it implied [… ] that this new type of offender, who is really hostis generis humani, acts under conditions that make it almost impossible for him to become aware of his crimes” (ibid., 400f.). Arendt reproaches the Jerusalem court for not having done justice to three problems: “the impairment of justice and fairness in a court of the victor, the clarification of the concept of ‘crime against humanity’ and the new type of administrative murderer” (ibid., 398). Nevertheless, she agrees with the death sentence imposed by the court. She says: “He could no longer stay on earth among men, because he was involved in an enterprise that admittedly wanted to make certain ‘races’ disappear from the earth forever” (ibid., 402).

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Arendt opposes her understanding of politics and her model of political freedom to totalitarian ideologies. The key concept here is the concept of action, which she had already developed in her book Vita activa. She speaks of the “revelation of the person in action and speech” (Arendt 1994, 164). The human being is unique in his individuality. “Speaking and acting are the activities in which this uniqueness is displayed” (ibid., 165). But it is about more than just representation. She emphasizes: “Speaking and acting, we enter the world of people” (ibid.). These activities are inextricably linked to freedom: “For human freedom is no less a fact, and not only a metaphysical access to the situation, as the automatism of processes, within which and against which it is constantly asserted” (Arendt 1994 a, 223). Arendt builds on the original, political sense of freedom as used by Homer. It differs from the later, “inner freedom” that came to the fore in Christianity. The free person is, in contrast to the slave, the one who does not have to obey anyone and is his own master. It finds its continuation in the politics of Aristotle, in which he determined the political and legal agreements within the polis as a matter of the ‘free and equal’ (cf. Aristotle: Politics 1259 b). The “freedom and equality” of the politically acting person includes that he “must always move like his equals”, as ArendtHerodotus agrees (Arendt 1994 b, 225; cf. Herodotus 1961, 86). Arendt sees herself in this tradition when she emphasizes that equality under the law is isonomia, “as democracy originally meant” (Arendt 1994 b, 225). In contrast to manufacturing, action does not end and is not completed in a work. Action remains, “even if it only accomplishes the least, also in the execution dependent on the fact that freedom is constantly confirmed, that new beginnings, as it were, constantly flow into what has already been begun. For the result of action is not an object that, once conceived, can also be manufactured. The result of action rather has the character of a story that continues as long as it is acted, but whose end and final result neither the one who began the story, nor anyone else, can foresee and conceptualize” (ibid., 224). The ability to develop a political life and participate in it is the only way to counteract a new totalitarianism. It is the hallmark of totalitarian regimes that they try to prevent the free action and thinking of people; because already the public “reasoning creates a space between people, in which freedom really is” (ibid., 205). The “depoliticization” of society and the retreat into the private sector are the real danger to democracy. In her book On Revolution (1963), Arendt discusses political principles using the example of the emergence of the republic in America. She sees the problem of modern, democratically constituted republics in the political

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significance of the representatives assembled in parliament. They are either the representatives elected by the people, who “only come together to implement the will of the electorate”, or they are “for a limited time […] the legitimate rulers of the people” (Arendt 1994 b, 304). The result is problematic in both cases. Because either the people fall into “lethargy” or the citizens of the “spirit of resistance to any of them elected by state power” (ibid., 305). There could have been a way out of this dilemma for the USA if, as a result of the “American Revolution”, a political model had become part of the constitution that had been proposed by Thomas Jefferson (1743-1776), the third president. The proposal was to move the political will formation into the townships, which had the character of “elementary republics”. It was a “council system” in which, as Jefferson formulated in a letter, “the voice of the whole people comes to the fore equally, peacefully and fully for discussion, so that then a community can be decided with reason” (ibid., 321). Jefferson saw in the councils a reliable means against the danger of dictatorship. He said: “If there is no longer a man in the state who is not a member of one of his councils, be they great or small, he will tear his heart out before he will let his power be torn away by any Caesar or Bonaparte ” (ibid., 325). But this one “real” chance of “direct democracy” was not realized in America and later perverted in the Soviet Union and finally replaced by a “one-party dictatorship” (cf. ibid., 317). In the current historical situation, however, Arendt still considers the two-party system prevalent in the USA and England to be better than a “multi-party system”, which, in her opinion, has a “tendency to the ‘totalitarian’” (ibid., 345). Arendt’s history of effects is closely linked to political-theoretical considerations conceived at the same time by Dolf Sternberger (cf. Sternberger 1984; 1986). Habermas has repeatedly referred to Arendt with his concept of a public sphere (cf. Habermas 1998, 446). The topicality of her approach to ideology criticism can be seen, for example, in political currents in various countries that either already practice or aim for a new form of totalitarianism.

2 Global Capitalism and Welfare State (Hayek) “Until the emergence of modern capitalism, it was only possible for most people to start a family and raise children if their parents left them a house and a piece of land and the tools required for production. What later

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enabled those who were not equipped with land and tools by their parents to survive and reproduce was the fact that it became practicable and profitable for the wealthy to use their capital in a way that gave employment to many people. If ‘capitalism created the proletariat,’ it did so by enabling many people to stay alive and have offspring. Of course, the result of this process in today’s Western world is no longer an increase in the proletariat in the old sense, but the emergence of a majority of wage-earners who are in many respects alien and often hostile to the driving forces of a free society.” (Friedrich A. von Hayek: The Constitution of Liberty. Tübingen 2005, 153) Friedrich August von Hayek is born in 1899 in Vienna. In 1921 he is awarded a doctorate in law and in 1923 in political science. He goes to the USA for a short time and studies concepts of business cycle theory and monetary policy there. After his return he founded the Austrian Institute for Business Cycle Research together with Ludwig von Mises and became its first director in 1927. In 1931 he is appointed to the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and becomes an opponent of John Maynard Keynes. His book The Road to Serfdom (Der Weg zur Knechtschaft), published in 1944, attracts attention. In it he criticizes the economic system of the Soviet Union. In 1947 Hayek founded the Mont Pèlerin Society, which has the goal of renewing liberalism. In 1950 he is appointed to the University of Chicago and in 1962 to a professorship at the University of Freiburg. In 1974 he and Gunnar Myrdal are awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics. He now also increasingly influences leading politicians. For example, Margret Thatcher refers to his theses in her economic policy. Hayek dies in 1992 in Freiburg (cf. Hennecke 2014). Classical liberalism developed in the 18th century with the rise of bourgeois society, which sought to assert itself as an independent force against the feudal state. The relationship between state and society forms the background for the economic development of the bourgeoisie. In a fundamental way, Adam Smith (1723-1790) designed a theory of classical liberalism in his work The Wealth of Nations from the year 1776. The starting point for the accumulating wealth of the nation is work and the division of labor practiced in industrial production (cf. Smith 2009, 12 ff.). Industrial production increasingly not only replaces the agriculture favored by the physiocrats, but also the wealth sought by the mercantilists through surpluses in foreign trade. Industrial production then leads to growing prosperity, according to the thesis by Smith, if it can develop freely without being influenced by state laws. The exchange of goods and services

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takes place in the interplay of supply and demand. State interventions are not only superfluous, but also harmful. Smith follows the logic of theby Mandeville told Fable of the Bees, when he emphasizes that everyone who, in his “business diligence”, has only “his own profit” in mind, nevertheless, as “led by an invisible hand” (ibid., 451), promotes the interest of the nation, and that “much more effectively than if he had the intention of actually promoting it” (ibid.). The conclusion is: The free development of economic activity is not only a right of the citizen, but serves the general welfare in an eminent way. Adam Smith did not live to see the enormous development of industrial production, which was set in motion after the invention of the steam engine (1765), nor the social upheavals that accompanied it. It was not until Hegel that he addressed it in his Philosophy of Right in 1821. He recognizes that not everyone benefits from social wealth. He says: “It appears here that in the excess of wealth the bourgeois society is not wealthy enough, i.e. it does not possess enough of its own property to control the excess of poverty and the production of the rabble. / These phenomena can be studied on the great example of England ” (Hegel 1970, 7, 390). MarxandEngels build on these considerations. Engels, who has been living in England since 1842, has described the misery of workers in an impressive and shocking way in his study of the situation of workers from the year 1845. The workers are forced to sell their labor power for a starvation wage (cf. MEW 2, 258). The solution to this problem demanded by him and Marx consists in the socialization of the means of production. Engels already formulates this Utopia in 1844 as follows: It is the task of the “community” to decide “what it can produce with the means at its disposal, and in accordance with the ratio of these productive forces to the mass of consumers, to what extent it has to increase or decrease production, to what extent it has to give in to luxury or restrict it” (MEW 1, 516). This Utopia was realized in Russia after the Revolution of 1917, although it was a less industrialized country. The model of the planned economy, which was fiercely fought by Hayek and all other representatives of liberalism, developed there. However, after the world economic crisis of 1929 to 1932, capitalism and with it classical economic liberalism also fell into a crisis. The idea developed to redefine liberalism in the sense of a “third way” between capitalism and communism. The aim was not to completely switch off the state from economic life, but to reduce its competences to the level necessary for the functioning of a free market economy. The economist Alexander Rüstow (1885-1963) used the term ‘neoliberalism’ to describe this approach.

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However, it remained disputed which specific tasks the state would have to take over. However, the idea that the state should ensure the “existence minimum” of its citizens was largely accepted. The term ‘neoliberalism’ acquired a clearly negative connotation, however, when the regime of Pinochet oriented itself towards the economic policy concepts developed by Hayek and MiltonFriedman (1912-2006), a representative of the Chicago school, from 1973 onwards. It was now used as a synonym for a ruthless market radicalism. Hayek, who is considered an important representative of the Austrian School of Neoliberalism next to von Mises, sees himself in the tradition of classical economic liberalism. He expressly agrees with Adam Smith’s thesis that the phases of economic progress are the “happiest” for all classes of society. Hayek quotes him as follows: “Progress is indeed, for all different classes of society, a state of encouragement and joy. Stagnation is something paralyzing; decline is something cheerless (Hayek 2005, 55). But how can this progress be achieved? In his fundamental work on economic science, The Constitution of Freedom from 1960, Hayek examines the conditions for this in four areas: First, it is the decisive aspect of the freedom of the individual, secondly the question of the necessity of the state, thirdly the ideal of a free society and fourthly the criticism of an—in his opinion—expanding welfare state. For Hayek, the starting point and center of a liberal economic order is the freedom of the individual. For his definition, he orientates himself to its historical origin. He says: “Man, or at least the European man, entered history separated into free and unfree. […] The freedom of the free may have been very different, but only to the degree of independence that the slave did not have at all. It always meant that a person had the possibility to act according to his own decisions and plans […]. One of the most common definitions of freedom is therefore also ‘independence from the whim of others’ (ibid., 15f.). Hayek deliberately defines freedom negatively: Freedom is the absence of “coercion by other people” (ibid., 16). With this definition, Hayek sets himself apart from three other possible definitions. On the one hand, there is physical freedom. So even “a climber”, “who has fallen into a crevasse from which he cannot save himself, is only ‘unfree’ in the transferred sense” (ibid., 16). But also the common concept of political freedom, which is often understood as the possibility of “the participation of citizens in the election of their government, in legislation and administration” (ibid., 18) does not meet the meaning intended by Hayek; because it is overlooked that “someone can enter into slavery or submit to a tyrant by voting or contract and thus agree to give up his freedom in the

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original sense” (ibid., 19). For Hayek, man is not, as for Aristotle, primarily a zoon politikon, but an individual. Finally, the so-called “inner freedom” must also be distinguished. Although we occasionally call someone who is dependent on his emotions a “slave of his passions”, but the problem of whether “someone is able or unable to choose reasonably between existing possibilities and to remain firm in a decision once made, is quite a different question than whether other people force their will on him or not” (ibid., 21). The second area of a liberal economic order concerns the question of the necessity of the state. Hayek admits that the state cannot do without coercive means. The justification for state coercion lies in the maintenance of an order which on the one hand guarantees every citizen a “private sphere”, including “private ownership”, but on the other hand ensures that “coercion and violence, fraud and deception are prevented, with the exception of coercion by the state” itself (ibid., 184). The unavoidable coercion of the state includes “taxation and various compulsory services, in particular military service” (ibid., 183). However, the state accepted by Hayek is a minimal state, which is to be set up according to the maxim: as little state as possible, as much state as necessary. The third area concerns the ideal of a free society. In it, the individual plays a central role. Only on the basis of his initiative can a process of economic progress be set in motion. Hayek argues in the spirit of Adam Smith when he emphasizes: “The essential thing for the favorable course of this process is that each individual has the opportunity to act according to his special knowledge, which is always unique with regard to the special circumstances, and that he can use his personal skills and opportunities, within the limits known to him, for his own personal purpose” (ibid., 39). It is therefore also no argument against “individual freedom that it is often abused” (ibid., 42). The possible abuse is not excluded. This is the price of freedom. “Freedom, which is only granted if it is known in advance that its consequences will be favorable, is not freedom” (ibid.). Freedom in a free society applies to everyone. But in fact, the way individuals make use of their freedom can have very different values for ​​ society. Hayek emphasizes the outstanding importance of the individual when he emphasizes: “The freedom that only one of a million people uses can be more important and more beneficial to the majority than a freedom that we all use” (ibid., 43). The basis for all social progress is often “a new idea that comes from one head” (ibid., 45). These, the social progress-making, forces include the free entrepreneurs. They are “the rich” who use their capital to give “many people employment” and thus create general prosperity. Hayek follows the logic of “invisible hand” designed by Adam Smith.

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Hayek distinguishes between two types of people. On the one hand, there are the “entrepreneurs”, understood in the broadest sense of the meaning. These are individuals who have new ideas and who have the courage to put these ideas into practice. They are willing to take a big risk and take responsibility for themselves and others. The other type is found among the great majority of workers and employees. They shy away from risk and prefer security to adventure. The way of life they prefer is the result of their choice. Hayek characterizes people of this type as follows: “Many people choose an unselfish position because it offers them better opportunities to live the way they want than an independent activity. Even among those who do not specifically want the greater security and freedom from risk and responsibility of the unselfish position, the decisive factor is often not that independence is unattainable, but that an appointment promises them a more satisfying activity and a higher income than they could have as self-employed” (Hayek 2005, 154f.) Hayek emphasizes that every person must always weigh up the advantages and disadvantages against each other when “choosing a life path” and be prepared to accept disadvantages for the important advantages. For the worker and employee this means: “Whoever wants a regular income for which he sells his work must dedicate his working hours to the immediate tasks assigned to him by others. Following the orders of others is a condition for the non-self-employed to achieve his goal. But if this is sometimes annoying to him, he is not forced in the sense of being forced” (ibd., 155). He is therefore not forced because he can change his employer. For this reason, he himself has a great interest in the number of employers being as large as possible. A single employer, as is the case, for example, in socialist societies, would be to his great disadvantage because now this single employer would dictate the working conditions and the amount of the wage or salary. Despite the great advantages of a free, capitalist economy, an increasingly large majority of employees are “foreign and often hostile to the driving forces of a free society” (see quotation). Since they make up the majority, their organized power is not insignificant. With the help of the state, whose legislation they can influence, they make themselves front against free entrepreneurship, although this is characterized by ideas and spontaneity and makes social and economic success possible in the first place. Hayek’s fear is that the free economy “cannot assert itself against the organized coercion of the state” in the long run (cf. ibid., 50). The method practiced by these forces of society is the transformation of the liberal state into a “welfare state”. Hayek’s criticism of what he calls the “welfare state”, which is called the social state in other countries, including Germany (cf. GG 20, 1), is not

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entirely directed against state welfare. However, he would like to limit this to the level compatible with a free market economy. The performance of the state accepted by him consists in the “securing against severe physical deprivation, the assurance of a given minimum existence for all” (ibid., 353), which is, however, “linked to the proof of need” (ibid., 411). But the representatives of the welfare state want more. They have the desire to “use the power of the government to ensure a more even or fairer distribution of goods. If this means that the coercive power of the government is to be used to ensure that certain people get certain things, it requires a distinction and unequal treatment of different people, which is incompatible with a free society. This is the welfare state that strives for ‘social justice’ and ‘first and foremost a redistributor of income’. He must lead back to socialism and its coercive and essentially arbitrary methods” (ibid., 353). In his opinion, the free society has to defend itself against a variety of methods of income redistribution that the representatives of the welfare state pursue. Issues are: The fight for wage increases, equal health care for all, unemployment insurance, old-age provision, income tax and, related to this, income equality. The fight for higher wages is the central issue of the unions. “They use their power in a way that is designed to make the market mechanism ineffective and at the same time gives them a control over the steering of economic activity” (ibid., 369). In fact, however, they do not achieve what they want, namely the increase in the purchasing power of employees, but only that money wages rise above real wages. The result, if unemployment is to be avoided, is an increasing inflation. As a result, the fought-for wage increases are ineffective. The second point concerns a state health system that promises the best possible care for every sick person. But this promise cannot be kept if the costs to be incurred for this are not to spiral out of control. There can be no equal treatment for all. Hayek has the following “liberal” solution for this problem: “It may sound harsh, but it is probably in the interest of everyone that in a free society the fully employed are often quickly cured of a temporary and not dangerous illness at the price of a certain neglect of the old and the terminally ill” (ibid., 405). The third point concerns unemployment insurance. While it is precisely the unions that are, according to Hayek, to a considerable extent responsible for unemployment through inappropriate wage demands, they leave the care of the unemployed to the state. Hayek rejects an unemployment insurance with differentiated benefit promises. His proposal is that the “state provides

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a uniform minimum for all those who cannot support themselves”, but that the “maintenance of the accustomed standard of living” is left to private, i.e. “competitive and voluntary companies” (ibid., 408). An extremely difficult point is old-age provision, i.e. the pension system. A system that is based on the fact that “each generation pays for the needs of the previous one and thus acquires the same claim to support from the next” cannot be abolished immediately once it has been introduced. It must either be “continued forever or left to complete collapse” (ibid., 412). In any case, “democracy will have to experience that it has to pay for its own folly” (ibid.). With regard to a reform of the tax system, Hayek speaks out in favor of the abolition of tax progression and in favor of a uniform proportional tax. Only individual taxes, “in particular the income tax, can be graded for good reason—namely, to compensate for the fact that many indirect taxes impose a proportional greater burden on smaller incomes” (ibid., 416). The tax progression at higher incomes is, however,—according to Hayek—not justifiable. It contains “no criterion whatsoever for what is to be considered just and what is to be considered unjust” (ibid., 426). Its only goal is the expropriation of the wealthy. However, it does not achieve its goal. Calculations show that even with massively increasing progression, its results are modest (cf. ibid., 422f.). Worse, however, is that with this the equality anchored in democracy is violated (cf. ibid., 426). The argument often put forward in defense of tax progression, that very high incomes are already unjust in themselves, because “no activity that one can carry out in one year or even in one hour can be of more value to society” than, for example, “110,000.DM”, Hayek considers to be false. He says: “Of course it can be worth a multiple of that. There is no necessary connection between the time an activity takes and the benefit the society will have from it” (ibid., 431). After the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the collapse of the communist planned economy, neoliberal thinkers see themselves confirmed in their approach. The American politician and political scientist Francis Fukuyama sees in this event the decisive victory of the liberal democracy of the West over communist dictatorship. He therefore speaks of an “end of history”. He sees an unbridgeable contradiction between the two social systems in the principles of freedom and equality. While communism stood up for the principle of equality, the West—as he believes rightly—chose freedom; because “every dollar the government spends on national health insurance or a welfare program means one dollar less for the private economy: every attempt to protect workers from unemployment and companies from bankruptcy means less economic freedom. There is no fixed or natural point at

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which freedom and equality are balanced, and there is no way to optimize both principles simultaneously” (Fukuyama 1992, 390). Freedom is more important than equality, so Fukuyama, even if this means disregarding the principle of justice. His remarkable argument is: “Human life thus contains a strange paradox: It apparently needs injustice, because the fight against injustice awakens the highest in man” (ibid., 412). However, in his opinion this fight must not be successful, because a just society would be like that of satiated dogs. His cynical justification is: “A satiated dog is content when he can sleep in the sun all day, because he is not dissatisfied with what he is. […] If mankind were to reach a form of society in which injustice was successfully abolished, the life of mankind would be quite similar to the life of the dog” (ibid., 412). However, this caricature of an allegedly just society can no longer be used to reject the criticism of a global capitalism that has not only driven the contrast between poverty and wealth to previously unknown heights, but has also led to worldwide unemployment and unfair working conditions (see Piketty 2016). The starting point for the abolition of these contradictions remains the analysis already carried out by Hegel. It consists in the impotence of the state and the failure of politics. In addition, the banking crisis that occurred in 2008 revealed another fundamental error in the system of capitalism: While highly speculative financial capitalism, detached from all political control and without regard for real economic relationships, sends billions of euros in fractions of seconds, states, i.e. taxpayers, have to bear the costs of rescuing so-called “systemically relevant” banks in the event of a impending collapse. The American political scientist Wendy Brown remarks on this: The “financial capital meltdown of 2008/2009” is the result of the “ever-increasing discrepancies between the fate of Wall Street and the so-called ‘real’ economy” (Brown 2015, 31). The thesis that an allegedly omnipotent state threatens to suffocate the free economy is wrong. It is an expression of an ideology. Rather, it is increasingly evident that the state is powerless against globally operating corporations. Brown’s thesis is therefore that “neoliberalism destroys democracy” (ibid., 7). The history of Hayek’s impact and the closely related neoliberal thinkers is linked to the economic policy of numerous governments around the world. But the criticism of unrestrained capitalism has also become impossible to ignore. It consists mainly in the fact that classical economic liberalism as well as neoliberalism is an ideology. The thesis that a free market economy largely unaffected by all state intervention creates general prosperity is

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not only false, but serves to conceal the actual mode of operation of capitalism. Therefore, as early as 1957, in his book Prosperity for All, Ludwig Erhard replaced the term ‘free market economy’ with that of the ‘social market economy’. He explains his concept as follows: “The term ‘social market economy’ has now, and not even only in Germany, become universally accepted. […] But an economic policy can only be called social if it allows economic progress, higher productivity and increasing productivity to benefit the consumer as a whole” (Erhard 2009, 190). However, the fact is that the gap between rich and poor has grown in recent decades. “According to the World Development Indicators 2013 of the World Bank, 16 percent of the world’s population has 83 percent of the assets on the planet”—so the former UN special rapporteur Jean Ziegler (Ziegler 2015, 49). At the same time, unemployment is rising. He illustrates the catastrophic consequences of this development with an example: “According to UNICEF, in 2013, 98,000 children under the age of ten died of hunger or of diseases due to malnutrition in Guatemala./Today, the clearest expression of inequality between people is the cannibalistic economic order on our planet” (ibid.). In terms of political reason, this means: “People are once again suffering from the consequences of the 1776 madness set in motion by Adam Smith in the world, that the ‘invisible hand’ of the market solves all problems by itself. In place of the regulatory ideal of the common good, the idea of competition and the ideology of growth at any price have taken hold. […] The tension between capital and human labor still exists. The communists tried to dissolve it by eliminating capital and liquidating the capitalists. As is well known, they failed. Capitalism, on the other hand, eliminates work and liquidates people at their jobs. Capitalism is no better than communism” (Geißler 2012, 38). Therefore, capitalism represents a new challenge to politics. Its task is, according to Habermas, the “political taming of a globally unleashed capitalism” (cf. Iser/Strecker 2010, 47). But this also means: Only a global, i.e. internationally coordinated politics can set a limit to globally acting capitalism. The following individual political measures are currently being discussed: Introduction of appropriate equal social standards in order to prevent competition distortions due to wage dumping by individual countries; internationally coordinated uniform tax system in order to dry up tax havens; progressive income tax and effective global capital tax; review of deregulation policy; review of privatization of public utility companies, etc. (cf. Piketty 2016, 627-793).

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3 ‘Unleashed Technology’ and Ecology (Jonas) “In the choice between man and nature, as it presents itself in the struggle for existence from case to case, however, man comes first and nature, even if its dignity is conceded, must give way to him and his higher dignity. Or, if the idea of ​​some ‘higher’ right is denied here, then, according to the nature itself, the egoism of the species always goes ahead and the exercise of human power against the rest of the natural world is a natural, from the mere ability based right. That was practically the position of all times, in which nature seemed inviolable in the great and therefore in every single one to the careless use of man. But even if the duty to man remains the absolute, it now includes the duty to nature as the condition of its continuation and as an element of its own existential completeness. We go beyond that and say that the newly discovered destiny community of man and nature also allows us to rediscover the self-evident dignity of nature and to preserve its integrity beyond the utilitarian. It need hardly be said that a sentimental understanding of this commandment is excluded by the law of life itself, which is apparently included in the to be preserved ‘integrity’, that is, to be preserved itself. Because encroachment on other life is given by the membership in the life realm eo ipso, since every kind of other lives and determines the environment of others and therefore the mere, naturally operated self-preservation of each one is a continuous intervention in the other life constitutes.” (Hans Jonas: The Principle of Responsibility. Attempt at an ethic for the technological civilization. Frankfurt a. M. 1984, 246 f.) Hans Jonas is born in 1903 in Mönchengladbach. He initially studies philosophy with Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger in Freiburg from 1921. In 1922, Jonas goes to Berlin for a year and studies at the local Collage for the Science of Judaism Jewish Studies. After returning to Freiburg in 1923, he follows his teacher Heidegger to Marburg, where he earns his doctorate in 1928 with his dissertation Gnosis und spätantiker Geist (Gnosis and late antique spirit). Here he also meets Hannah Arendt. Because of his Jewish background, he emigrates in 1933 first to London, then to Jerusalem in 1935. In 1938, he receives a call to the Hebräische Universität (Hebrew University) in Jerusalem. After the outbreak of war, he is a member of the English army from 1940 to 1945. In July 1945, he learns that his mother was murdered in the Auschwitz concentration camp. From 1948 to 1949, he serves in the Israeli army. In 1949, he follows a call to McGill University in Montreal (Canada) and teaches at Carleton University in Ottawa from

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1950 to 1954. From 1955 to 1976, he is a professor of philosophy at the New School for Social Research in New York. His much-noticed work Das Prinzip Verantwortung (The Imperative of Responsibility  ) appears in 1979. Among the numerous awards he receives after the war are the ‘Große Bundesverdienstkreuz’ (‘Great Federal Cross of Merit’) and the ‘Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels’ (‘Peace Prize of the German Book Trade’) (1987). Jonas dies in New York in 1993 (cf. Jonas 2003). The starting point for the concept of a responsibility ethic in a “technological civilization” developed by Jonas is the conflict that has arisen since the Industrial Revolution from the changed relationship of man to nature. The problem arises from the rapidly developing technology. Jonas states that “the promise of modern technology has turned into a threat” (Jonas 1984, 7). There have already been harmful impacts on the natural environment in antiquity, such as the felling of large forest areas for the purpose of shipbuilding, but these were of limited importance. The decisive turning point came at the beginning of the modern era with the renewal of a causal-mechanical thinking, which deprived the things of their independence and interpreted them as controllable objects. Heidegger has already pointed this out emphatically. Things are objects that a subject “imagines”. The sum of the objects imagined is the world. The world thus imagined results in a picture of the world. This is where the age of the “world image” begins (cf. Heidegger 1963, 69). The imagining, disposing, manufacturing thinking is the hallmark of technology. This is not the subsequent application of a theoretical view that was initially without interest. The modern sciences themselves have a technical character. Meanwhile, the technical thinking has taken on its all-determining dominance. Heidegger sees this as a growing danger. But man does not recognize it. While he actually moves “at the outermost edge of the crash”, “the man thus threatened spreads out in the figure of the Lord of the Earth at this very moment” (Heidegger 1962, 26). Ernst Bloch also points to the dangers of technology. He says: “Our previous technology is in nature like an occupying army in enemy territory” (Bloch 1977 GA 5, 814). He wants to develop a different relationship to nature, which he describes with the term “natural alliance” (ibid., 813). He says: “Natural current as friend, technology as release and mediation of the creations slumbering in nature’s womb, that belongs to the most concrete of concrete utopias” (ibid.). However, Jonas distances himself from every Marxist utopia (cf. Jonas 1984, 9). Less utopian, but rather critical, Jürgen Habermas makes, similarly to Martin Heidegger, in his essay “Technology and Science as Ideology” from the year 1968, attention to the fact that modern natural science and

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technology have an interest in the domination over reified processes of reality. They form the “crystal-clear background ideology” of our society (Habermas 1969, 88). Jonas nevertheless builds on considerations of Heidegger, Bloch and Habermas with his criticism of technology. He states that the original goal of technology, which it had at all times anyway, since “man was never without technology” (Jonas 1984, 16), was to make human life more bearable in confrontation with the ‘overpowering of nature’. But now, with the great successes of “high technology”, previously unrecognized dangers arise. Jonas describes them as follows: “The subjugation of nature intended for human happiness, in its excess of success, which now also extends to the nature of man himself, has led to the greatest challenge that has ever arisen from man’s own doing” (ibid., 7). The “adventure of technology” presents us with a wealth of new challenges. It not only forces us to rethink our understanding of nature and our relationship to it, it also forces us to redefine the essence of man and his actions. Finally, however, a re-formulation of ethics becomes inevitable. It is above all the role of the future that must find its appropriate place in this ethics. The “sheer magnitude of the effects and often their irreversibility” (ibid., 9) associated with modern technology make an ethics necessary that takes this into account. Jonas concludes: “All this puts responsibility at the center of ethics” (ibid.). It is the ethics of responsibility that contains the idea that humans can also be held accountable for the further consequences of their actions. But, according to Jonas, this thought was far from previous ethics. Rather, it was assumed that “the nature of man and the nature of things” are “fundamentally” fixed and that, therefore, the “human good […] can be easily and insightfully determined on this basis”. The ethical consequence was: “The scope of human action and, therefore, human responsibility is narrowly defined” (ibid., 15). The scope of ethically relevant action is also limited because technology referred to the non-human nature and the relationship to it was considered “ethically neutral”. This meant: “Ethical significance belonged to the direct interaction of man with man, including the interaction with oneself; all traditional ethics is anthropocentric ” (ibid., 22). The shared presence of the “contemporaries” forms the framework for the action “and its future horizon is limited to their probable lifespan” (ibid., 23). Finally, in another respect, traditional ethics was more unproblematic than the new one to be developed. Jonas refers to Kant here, who emphasized the simplicity of moral-practical knowledge in contrast to theoretical knowledge. Jonas quotes Kant as follows: “`What I … have to do in order for my will to be morally good, I don’t need any far-reaching shrewdness

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at all’” (ibid., 24); because after all, everyone can know that he “has to act in accordance with the moral law” (ibid.). In addition, Kant’s ethics was a principles-based ethics. This meant: “Nobody was held responsible for the unintended later effects of his good-willed, well-considered and well-executed act” (ibid., 25). But in view of the enormous effects of technology on nature, an ethics that ignores this aspect can no longer be represented. The “critical vulnerability of nature through the technical intervention of man—a vulnerability that was not suspected before it became apparent in already inflicted damage” (ibid., 26) was newly discovered. With its discovery, the “science of environmental research”, i.e. the “ecology”, came into being. It includes the insight that the knowledge of the effects of technical interventions in nature will now become a “duty”. Furthermore, it means that an ethical problem arises when “predictive knowledge lags behind technical knowledge” (ibid., 28). This ethical problem exceeds all previously known ones. “No previous ethics had to take into account the global condition of human life and the distant future, indeed the existence of the species” (ibid., 28). If we take this problem seriously, then a re-examination of our relationship to nature is urgently needed. This re-examination goes beyond a utilitarian interest, which requires us not to “cut down the branch we’re sitting on” (ibid., 27). Rather, what is required is to rethink the “anthropocentric limitation of all previous ethics”. Jonas is willing to do this when he suggests that “it is at least no longer pointless to ask whether the state of the non-human nature, the biosphere as a whole and in its parts, which is now subject to our power, has thus become a human asset and has something like a moral claim on us—not only for our own sake, but also for its own sake and by its own right” (ibid., 29). This means that not only—as Kant emphasized—does the human being represent an end in itself, but also the non-human living nature. Contrary to the prevailing view in science and technology, which subsumes the entire nature into the causal schema of chance and necessity and “strips it of all dignity of purpose”, a way of thinking that is willing to also recognize purposes in the non-human, living nature will be more attuned to this “inherent dignity of nature” (see quotation); because “a silent appeal for restraint of its integrity seems to emanate from the threatened wealth of the world of life” (ibid., 29). The changed attitude towards nature would also have an impact on politics. While the ancient polis was an “enclave in the non-human world”, the world of humans expands in the course of progressing technology “over the whole of earthly nature and usurps its place. […] the natural is entangled by the sphere of the artificial; and at the same time, the total artifact, the works

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of man that have become world, that act on him and through him, create a new kind of ‘nature’, that is, its own dynamic necessity, with which human freedom is confronted in an entirely new sense” (ibid., 33). With the help of technology, humans create an artificial world in which nature as the basis of life is in danger of disappearing in its own right and with its own claim. The resulting structure of necessities threatens humans in their physical existence and in their moral freedom. In this situation, a new ethically relevant imperative arises for Jonas. It reads: “’Act in such a way that the effects of your action are compatible with the permanence of true human life on earth’; or expressed negatively: ‘Act in such a way that the effects of your action are not destructive to the future possibility of such life’” (ibid., 36). But technology does not stop at mastering the non-human nature. Man himself becomes the “object of technology”. “Homo faber” turns his art on himself and begins to “inventively re-invent the inventor and maker of all other things. This completion of his power, which can very well mean the overcoming of man, […] challenges the last effort of ethical thinking” (ibid., 47). The first, example he gives of this specific technology is the program of life extension. The progress in cell biology opens up the prospect of “counteracting the biochemical aging processes and prolonging human life, perhaps indefinitely. Death no longer appears as a necessity belonging to the nature of the living, but as an avoidable […] organic malfunction” (ibid., 48). If it were possible to correct this “malfunction”, then the biological balance of death and reproduction would lose importance. But whose life is to be prolonged indefinitely? Are the important ones, the paying ones or everyone? In any case, “the price for extended old age is a proportional slowdown of replacement, that is, a reduced access to new life. The result would be a decreasing proportion of youth in an increasingly older population” (ibid., 49). In the extreme, this means that in order to abolish death, we also have to abolish reproduction. Can we want that? Jonas considers: Perhaps the “wisdom” of the mortality that naturally comes to us lies precisely in the fact that “it offers us the promise of eternal renewal, which lies in the beginning, the immediacy and the zeal of youth, together with the constant supply of otherness as such” (ibid.). Jonas rejects the technical utopia of an unlimited lifespan. He says: “This always-again-beginning, which is only to be had at the price of alwaysagain-ending, can very well be the hope of mankind” (ibid.). And that would mean that the “philanthropic gift of science to mankind, […]—to escape the curse of mortality—turns against mankind” (ibid., 50).

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The second example concerns the technical methods of behavior control. Here too, much is possible, other things are still utopia. Jonas lists a number of such techniques. They include “soul control by means of chemical agents or by direct electrical action on the brain through implanted electrodes”, methods whose ambivalence is not to be denied. They can serve the “liberation of mentally ill patients from painful and dysfunctional symptoms”, but also lead to the “relief of society from the nuisance of difficult individual behavior” in an unobtrusive way (ibid., 51). And further: “Should we induce learning attitudes in schoolchildren by mass administration of drugs and thus avoid the appeal to autonomous motivation? Should we overcome aggression by electronic pacification of brain regions?” (ibid.). Finally, the field of economy is also not to be left out. “Businesses could be interested in some of these techniques for performance enhancement among their employees” (ibid.). All of these techniques raise questions of “human rights” and human dignity. The examples have one thing in common. They replace the moral-practical dealings of people with each other by technology; they make the human being a manipulable object. Jonas emphasizes: “Every time we bypass the human way of dealing with human problems in this way and replace it with the short-circuit of an impersonal mechanism, we take something away from the dignity of personal autonomy and take another step forward on the path from responsible subjects to programmed behavior systems” (ibid., 52). The third example, which—according to Jonas—requires its own, detailed discussion, he outlines as follows: It is about the field “of a technology applied to humans—the genetic control of future humans”. It is about nothing less than “that the human being wants to take his own evolution into his own hands, with the goal not only of the preservation of the species in its integrity, but also of its improvement and change according to his own design” (ibid., 52). Technical knowledge has grown “in the form of natural science” at a rapid pace; but it has “destroyed the mere idea of norm as such”. Through this knowledge, “the nature was ‘neutralized’ with regard to value at first, then also the human being. Now we tremble in the nakedness of nihilism, in which the greatest power is paired with the greatest emptiness, the greatest ability with the least knowledge of what it is for” (ibid., 57). A barrier to this nihilism could only be offered by a “restoration of the category of the holy” which is home in religion. But this has been “destroyed by the ‘Enlightenment’”. This means for the present: A “religion that is not there cannot take over the task of ethics” (ibid., 58; cf. Jonas 1997, 403). But while it can be said of religion that “it exists or does not exist, the same

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applies to ethics: it must exist. It must exist, because people act” (Jonas 1984, 58). The task of today’s ethics is to tame an “unleashed technology” (ibid., 327). It goes far beyond that of traditional ethics. It cannot be limited to a practical knowledge belonging to ethics itself, but must give the impetus for the development of theoretical knowledge in the field of natural science and technology. In order to be able to assess the risks of technology realistically, “a science of hypothetical predictions, a comparative ‘futurology’” is necessary (ibid., 62f.). This science deliberately focuses on the risks because the knowledge is already available that an “unleashed technology” endangers the ecological balance. This threat justifies a “heuristics of fear” (ibid., 64). Its reasons are that modern technology, in contrast to evolution, which always takes place in small steps and “never goes for the whole and can therefore afford countless ‘mistakes’ in the individual case” (ibid., 70), does not allow any time. In addition, it cannot really overview the actual, already seemingly small interventions in nature in their consequences and, to the extent that it “increases the use […] also no longer has the time for correction” (ibid., 71). This means that it cannot exclude that its interventions are not only “irreversible, but also driving and surpassing the will and planning of the actors” (ibid., 72). In view of this situation, a responsibility ethics must make clear what is at stake and what is being gambled away, possibly lightly. Jonas emphasizes: “It is to be considered that there is an inheritance of a previous evolution to be preserved, which cannot be entirely bad, if only because it is supposed to have given its present holders the (self-ascribed) ability to judge good and evil. This heritage is lost” (ibid., 72f.). The goal of protecting the livelihoods of people and preserving the biosphere from dangerous interventions therefore has absolute priority over any “meliorism”, i.e. over a “progress that, at best, aims to bring about a terrestrial paradise. He and his works are therefore more in the sign of arrogance than of necessity” (ibid., 79). The weighing of the advantages and disadvantages of technical interventions is similar to a bet, given the often unpredictable consequences. However, the decisive principle of a responsibility ethics, which has the character of a “categorical imperative”, must not be called into question in this context: “Never may existence or human nature as a whole be used in the bets of the actor” (ibid., 81). It is in its simplest form, “that there are people, with the emphasis equally on the fact and on the what of existence” (ibid., 91f.). The responsibility is not even towards the unborn of a distant future, which can not yet be perceived as real, but affects the “idea of the human being” (ibid., 91). But it is correct that from the being of people it is concluded that there should also be people in the future. But with this, as Jonas emphasizes, the

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“metaphysical dogma” is violated, that from a being no ought can be concluded. But this dogma does not have a self-evident ontological basis by any means. It denies the thought that in being itself an ought can already be inherent. Jonas makes this clear using the example of the “newborn”. This one example is enough to break the “ontological dogma” (ibid., 235). It is “the newborn, whose mere breathing necessarily sends an ought to the environment, namely: to take care of it. Look and you will know. I say ‘uncontradictory’, not ‘irresistible’; because of course the power of this, like any ought, can be resisted, its call can be met with deafness (although at least in the case of the mother this is seen as degeneration) or by other ‘calls’ such as prescribed infanticide, first-born sacrifice and the like, indeed even by the naked instinct of self-preservation—this does not change the contradiction of the claim as such and its immediate evidence. […] I really mean that here the being of a simply ontically existing being contains an ought for others immanently and obviously, and it would also do so if nature did not help this ought by powerful instincts and feelings; often taking over the whole business (ibid., 235).” This view of the “primary object of responsibility” escapes the natural scientist, who can only see in the infant “a conglomerate of cells, which in turn are conglomerates of molecules” (ibid., 236). But how did this way of thinking come to dominate? Drawing on Heidegger, Jonas says: “The danger arises from the overestimation of the science-based, industrial-technological civilization” (ibid., 251). It begins at the beginning of modern times. One of its most prominent thinkers was Francis Bacon (1581-1626). His approach to natural science, based on experience and experiment, goes far beyond what he could imagine himself: an immeasurably increased, industrially determined, production- and consumption-oriented, capitalist society. Jonas explains this development as follows: “What we can call the Baconian program, namely to base knowledge on domination over nature and to make domination over nature usable for the improvement of humanity, has neither possessed the rationality nor the justice with which it would have been compatible in itself from the beginning; but its success dynamics, which necessarily lead to the immoderation of production and consumption, would probably have overwhelmed any society in view of the short-term nature of human goal-setting, indeed the real unpredictability of the extent of success” (ibid., 251). This development has now led to the fact “that we live in an apocalyptic situation, that is, in the face of an universal catastrophe, if we let the current things run their course” (ibid., 251). Bacons formula ‘knowledge is power’ (cf. Bacon 1981, 96) has led to a “self-destructive progress”, which can be seen as a “dialectic of power”. From the first stage of power, which consisted

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in the rule of man over nature, a second stage has developed, “which is already no longer that of man, but that of power itself, dictating its use to its supposed owner, making him the willing executor of his ability, thus enslaving him instead of freeing him” (Jonas 1984, 254). In this situation, a third stage of power would be necessary, “which puts man back in control of ‘his’ power […]. It must come from society, because no private insight, responsibility or fear is up to the task” (ibid.). The “Western industrial societies” and the “free economy” ruling in them are not able to do this, because they are precisely “the breeding ground of the dynamics […], which the danger of death drives”. And although the danger of a self-sufficient technology of total nature control is hardly recognized in its dimension, another one is already emerging through modern genetic engineering, which, unlike the previous socialist utopias (cf. ibid., 382f.), is working on the production of a “new” man. In the pursuit of this goal, the “Baconian formula” of “power over nature” celebrates its highest triumph by—by Bacon not yet guessed—“the power of man over man” driving it into unprecedented dimensions. Even before the attempt of genetic manipulation of human genes, the “prenatal selection” is to be mentioned. It ranges from “defensive to meliorist heredity strategy” (Jonas 1985, 175). The first includes abortion in the case that “a severe and incorrigible damage, such as Mongolism” (ibid.) is present; the second the prenatal “sex choice” widespread in some countries. The next step is eugenics, which can be divided into positive and negative. Jonas notes: “As for positive eugenics, the planned human breeding with the goal of improving the species, we can be brief after the discouraging example from recent German history” (ibid., 176). Even with the “best intentions,” it is questionable how successful it would be due to the “essential blindness of the experiment.” What would be necessary is a “complete genetic ‘mapping,’” which would not only include the “manifest properties of individual phenotypes,” but also what is “invisible in terms of the genetic stock” (ibid.). Negative eugenics is different. Jonas states: “That diabetes, epilepsy, schizophrenia, and hemophilia are undesirable—for the sufferers as well as for their fellow human beings—is undisputed” (ibid., 177). Nevertheless, he is cautious about making a recommendation here. His verdict is: “Except in the case of the most unambiguous objects of negative eugenics, where the high human price of such interference is just barely justified,… we do not buy greater security by exchanging the unplanned for the planned” (ibid., 178). He believes that cloning humans, i.e. “asexual reproduction” through a “genetically exact copy,” should be completely rejected. In contrast to identical twins, who grow up side by side and therefore have their own life stories,

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the cloned human is given a model of his life as a genetic copy. Jonas formulates a “right to ignorance” as follows: “Never can the right to that ignorance be denied to an entire existence, which is a condition of the possibility of authentic action, i.e. freedom in general” (ibid., 194). The history of Jonas’s effect has left clear traces in philosophical and political discussion. His “prophecy of disaster” has been confirmed in several respects. It not only affects resource consumption and the rapid extinction of species, but, as a result of the ongoing global warming, the entire biosphere. Slowly, a awareness is developing that man, with technology, is creating a way of thinking that increasingly gains power over him. As a mere object, so the growing insight, man loses his freedom vis-à-vis a self-determining technology. One milestone are the possibilities of genetic engineering discussed by Jonas, but by no means exhausted. Questions of genetic engineering currently find a new starting point in the term “genetic enhancement” (cf. Bohlken/Thies 2009, 108), i.e. a “genetic improvement” of man. Habermas emphatically points to the dangers of a genetic engineering whose goal is a “genetically modified person” (Habermas 2005, 208); because “a genetic intervention does not open up the communicative space to address the planned child as a second person” (Habermas 2013, 107). A initially final stage of this technological fantasy consists in the “development of non-organic life” (Harari 2015, 487), life that not only “improves” the homo sapiens, but surpasses him. The beginning is the project to “create a completely new digital brain with consciousness and memory” (ibid., 499). It has been funded by EU research funds since 2013 (cf. ibid., 499). It seems that there is only one way out of the dangers of an “unleashed technology”: The idea of mediation must take the place of the ideology of domination, which takes into account the ecological balance and preserves the dignity of man as a person.

XI Responsibility and Discourse Ethics

The ethics of responsibility occupies a special position within ethical concepts. While ancient ethics of happiness is based on what every human being ‘wants’ by nature and the ethics of duty says what he ‘should’ do on the basis of the imperatives of practical reason, the ethics of responsibility emphasizes that we cannot avoid having to act, whether by a ‘doing’ or by an ‘allowing’. For this action we are—whether we want it or not—responsible. Responsible action comprises three aspects that distinguish us as persons capable of speech and action: We are responsible for an action in the sense that we are first of all in situations that present a challenge to us. With an action we ‘respond’ to them. Responsibility therefore means first of all: responding to a situation. For an action we are ‘responsible’ in the second sense that we are its author, i.e. that it can be attributed to us in a moral, occasionally also in a legal, sense. We are to blame for our actions. As a result, thirdly, we can be held accountable by others for our actions and we have to ‘account’ for them to them. Even if a person can resign in hopeless situations and give up the search for happiness and also escape the strict imperatives of an ethics of duty through amoral behavior, the fact that he has to act as a person capable of speech and action and is responsible for these actions in a threefold sense cannot be avoided. In this respect, responsibility and accountability are undeniable facts for every person. The ethics of responsibility has the fact of responsibility as its basis and reflects its practical consequences. In his much-noticed lecture “Politics as a Vocation”, Max Weber distinguished the ethics of conviction from the ethics of responsibility. While © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer-Verlag GmbH, DE, part of Springer Nature 2023 W. Pleger, The Good Life, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-05969-7_12

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the ethics of conviction, to which he also counts radical socialist currents alongside Christianity, is based on principles and leaves the consequences of actions to God or history, the ethics of responsibility emphasizes that every actor is responsible for the “foreseeable” consequences of his actions. For Sartre the responsibility of man results from the “facticity” of freedom. Man is free because there is no God who prescribes a nature to him. What he brings with him at his birth is his pure existence. His essence, i.e. his being, he must create through free designs himself. This happens through actions. By designing himself, he also designs a image of man. But that also means that he must be able to account for his image of man before the entire human race. Man is often also in situations that are given to him and for which he is not responsible, but this does not excuse him. He also bears responsibility for what he is not ‘responsible’ for. With Apeland Habermas the responsibility ethic experiences a turn towards a communication and discourse ethic. For Apel, the linguisticity of humans represents a transcendental a priori. It is the “a priori of the communication community” that is an inescapable prerequisite for everyone who speaks. In it, ethics finds its “ultimate justification”. Habermas expands this approach to a discourse ethic. While in undisturbed communication there is an agreement about unquestioned claims of validity, such as the truth of statements and the correctness of action norms, in discourse these claims of validity are problematic in a “free from compulsion and pressure of experience” situation. In it, an “ideal speech situation” is anticipated, which should ensure that the consensus achieved in it is a reasonable one.

1 Ethics of Conviction and Responsibility Ethic (Weber) “We must realize that all ethically oriented action can be based on two fundamentally different, irreconcilably opposed maxims: it can be ‘ethically of conviction’ or ‘ethically of responsibility’. Of course, this is not to say that ethics of conviction is identical to irresponsibility and ethics of responsibility is identical to amorality. But it is an abyssal opposition whether one acts under the ethical maxim of conviction—religiously speaking -: ‘the Christian does right and leaves the success to God’, or under the ethic of responsibility: that one has to take responsibility for the (foreseeable) consequences of one’s actions. […] If the consequences of an action flowing from

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pure conviction are bad, the actor is not to blame, but the world is responsible for the stupidity of other people or—the will of the God who created them that way. The ethicist of responsibility, on the other hand, counts with precisely those average defects of humans -, as Fichte has correctly said, he has no right to assume their goodness and perfection, he does not feel able to shift the consequences of his own actions, as far as he could foresee them, onto others. He will say: These consequences will be attributed to my action.” (Max Weber: Politics as a Vocation. Stuttgart 1999, 70f.) Max Weber is born in Erfurt in 1864. He studies law, economics, and history in Berlin from 1883/1884 and is awarded a doctorate there in 1889. Two years later he completes his habilitation with a work on “The Roman Agrarian History”. In 1894 he becomes Professor of Economics in Freiburg and in 1896 in Heidelberg. A nervous illness forces him to give up his teaching activities in 1899 and to resign his office in 1903 (cf. Marianne Weber 1989, 254 ff.). In 1904 Weber and his wife undertake extensive travels to Southern Europe and the USA. In 1905 his extensive essay “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism” appears. In Heidelberg a circle of young intellectuals forms around Weber, including Karl Jaspers, Friedrich Gundolf, Emil Lask, Ernst Bloch and Georg Lukács. Weber becomes an initiator of the German Society for Sociology, founded in 1909. In 1916 he writes a memorandum against the intensified submarine war, which he sends to the Reich Chancellery, the Foreign Office and the party leaders. After the end of the war, Weber is committed to the young republic and becomes a member of the German Democratic Party (DDP) founded by Friedrich Naumann. In 1919 he takes up a professorship in Munich and gives a lecture there entitled “Politics as a Profession”, which becomes a key text of political ethics. In April 1920 Weber leaves the DDP. In June of the same year he dies in Munich (cf. Fügen 1985; Heins 1990). Although Weber is one of the founding fathers of sociology in Germany, his scientific interests extend far beyond the boundaries of this discipline (cf. Jaspers o. J., 225). Jurisprudence, economics, philosophy, religion, and history form for him a closely interwoven band of social historical questions. This connects him with the work by Marx (cf. Löwith 1988, 5, 324). In addition, both pursue a common, specific question. It is the question of the conditions of origin and existence of capitalism. But their answers are quite different. While Marx embeds it in a materialistic view of history, Weber’s aim is to find the “spirit of capitalism”. Both are agreed, however, that

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capitalism is the shaping force of present-day society and that it is questionable and ambivalent in itself. Just as Marx is willing to recognize the enormous productivity of modern capitalism, Weber also points out its negative effects on the situation of the working person. While Marx chooses the concept of alienation to characterize this situation, Weber describes capitalism as a “factually unchangeable shell” into which man is “born” and “in which he has to live” (Weber 2013, 79). Capitalism is therefore also the background for the question of ethics. The question is: How has capitalism developed into an economic and ethical attitude? In contrast to Marx, Weber sees in the “capitalist spirit” the cause of certain economic conditions and not vice versa. In order to be able to recognize the causes of capitalism, Weber first allows a representative of the “capitalist spirit” in its purest form to have his say. He finds him in the American statesman, writer and inventor Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790). Weber quotes Franklin as follows: “Consider that time is money; if one could earn ten shillings a day by his labor, and spends half of that day in idleness, or in doing something he is fond of, he ought not to reckon that the only expense; he has really spent or rather thrown away five shillings besides” (ibid., 75). This capitalist spirit comprises two aspects. One is an unlimited desire for profit. Weber points out that the desire for profit does not aim at a luxurious life, but at the possibility of saving this profit or investing it in order to achieve an even higher profit. The second aspect, which forms a unity with the first, is the more important one. It consists in a work ethic driven to the extreme. According to this, the important thing is to avoid luxury, not to “laze around”, not to “indulge in pleasures”, but to work beyond one’s needs. Work itself becomes the actual purpose of life. Work becomes a profession, even more, a calling. But this by Franklin demanded setting is by no means self-evident. Weber emphasizes: “The spirit of capitalism […] had to assert itself in a hard struggle against a world of hostile powers. An attitude as expressed in the quoted remarks of Benjamin Franklin and found the approval of an entire people would have been condemned in antiquity as in the Middle Ages as an expression of the dirtiest greed and an absolutely undignified attitude” (ibid., 80). This attitude only changed with the Reformation. It was especially the by Calvin represented doctrine of predestination that brought about a change. The question was: How can man recognize that he belongs to the elect? The answer is: It is primarily the external success generated by work. In this way, “those self-confident ‘saints’ are bred, which we find in the steel-hard Puritan

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businessmen of that heroic age of capitalism and in individual examples up to the present day. And on the other hand, in order to attain that self-confidence, as the most outstanding means restless professional work was stressed” (ibid., 150f.). In the meantime, capitalism has rid itself of its religious origins. From the religious asceticism of the monks became the “inner-worldly asceticism” of modern professional work. With it, an economic order was created that is a “steel-hard shell” from which nobody can escape (ibid., 201). The conclusion is: “As asceticism undertook to transform the world and to exert an influence in the world, the external goods of this world gained increasing and finally inescapable power over man, as never before in history. Today its spirit—finally, who knows?—has escaped from this shell. The victorious capitalism no longer needs this support since it rests on a mechanical basis” (ibid.). The capitalist economic order is, despite all rationality in the individual, in its totality an irrational “engine” that, once set in motion, runs mechanically “until the last ton of fossil fuel is consumed” (ibid.). In his lecture “Science as a Vocation”, which was published in print in 1919, Weber connects his presentation of the questions, methods and possibilities of statements of the sciences with an analysis of the basic features of the present age. He emphasizes that the demand on the scientist is that he carries out his task with “passion”, but at the same time is “purely for the sake of the matter ” (Weber 1973, 314). The matter of science goes far beyond the interests of the individual scientist, because “scientific work is embedded in the course of progress ” (ibid., 315), a progress that does not come to an end and therefore raises the “problem of meaning of science” (ibid., 316). The attitude of people towards science has assumed an ambivalent or negative character in a time that places the “experience” and the “personality” in the center. These needs cannot be satisfied by science. It does something else. Weber notes: “The scientific progress is a fraction, namely the most important fraction, of that intellectualization process to which we have been subject for millennia, and to which today is usually taken in such an extraordinarily negative way” (ibid.). Intellectualization and “rationalization” mean that we can calculate and “control” reality to an increasing extent. “But that means: the disenchantment of the world” (ibid., 317). This has an impact on the self-conception of the human being. The contemporary “cultural human being” is no longer, like “any farmer of old times”, embedded in the “organic cycle of life”, but “placed in the continuous enrichment of civilization with thoughts, knowledge, problems” (ibid., 318). Science offers solutions to all possible technical problems, but it is neither a “way ‘to God’”, nor “to true nature”, nor a “way to happiness ”.

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It does not tell us anything about the “meaning of the world”. The “simplest answer” to the question of the meaning of science was given—according to Weber—Tolstoy—when he said: “It is meaningless because it does not answer the only question important to us: ‘What should we do? How should we live?’” (ibid., 322). Weber makes this clear with an example from the field of medicine. Every doctor is obliged to use all his medical knowledge for the preservation of human life, regardless of whether a terminally ill person “pleads for release from life”. “Medicine and the penal code” forbid the question: “Whether life is worth living and when?” As a natural science, medicine does indeed give us an answer to the question: “What should we do, if we want to technically master life? Whether we should technically master it and want to, and whether that ultimately makes sense;—they leave that entirely up to the individual” (ibid., 324). The answer to the question of the meaning of life, of a binding value system, cannot be given by science, but also not by religion, because by now “this fundamental fact applies to every human being that he has to live in a godless, prophet-less time” (ibid., 335). But neither do the “worldviews and party opinions” (ibid., 332) offer help, “because the different value systems of the world are in insoluble conflict with each other” (ibid., 328). Ethics cannot be rationally justified either scientifically, worldviewly or at all. The question of the meaning of life, of a binding value system, each individual has to decide for himself. He succeeds if he “finds the demon and obeys him, who holds the threads of his life in his hand” (ibid., 339). In his lecture “Politics as a Vocation”, which was also published in 1919, Weber not only links the question of the professional role of a politician to questions of political ethics, but also to a determination of ethics in a general sense. In a foreword from the year 1926, Weber’s wife points to the occasion of this lecture. The goal of this lecture was—according to Marianne Weber—to serve as a guide for the young people who were deeply affected by their experiences of war and post-war times “for the various forms of work-based activity” (Weber 1999, 3). This also shows that Weber was concerned with more than just a sociology of a specific professional role. For him, after the destruction of the old political and social order, it was about the question of a new political order in Germany, but also about the basic principles of a reliable ethics. Weber begins his considerations with the question of the “reasons for legitimacy of rule” (ibid., 8). He distinguishes three forms of legitimate rule for a state. Firstly, there is the “‘traditional’ rule, as exercised by the patriarch and the old-fashioned patrimonial ruler”. Secondly, there is the “‘charismatic’ rule, as exercised by the prophet or—in the field of politics—by the

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anointed warlord or the plebiscitary ruler, the great demagogue and political party leader”, and finally, thirdly, there is the legitimate “rule by ‘legality’, by the belief in the validity of a legal statute ”. It is a “rule, as exercised by the modern ‘civil servant’” in the performance of his duties. It is a rule in which administration, the bureaucracy, plays an important role. The commonality of these three types of rule in a state is that each of them “claims the monopoly of legitimate physical violence for itself (successfully)”. With the abdication of the emperor in November 1918, there was also no formal future for a “traditional rule” in Germany. Weber sees no reasonable alternative to democracy. But, in his opinion, there are two versions of it, namely as a “leader democracy” with a functioning administrative apparatus, the so-called “machine”, or as a “leaderless democracy, that is, the rule of the ‘professional politicians’ without a profession, without the inner, charismatic qualities that make a leader”. The only chance for leadership in a new, democratic Germany, Weber sees in the following: “The only outlet for the need for leadership could be the President of the Reich, if he were elected plebiscitary, not parliamentary. Leadership on the basis of work performance could arise”. Alone, how the “operation of politics as a ‘profession’ will actually take shape in the chaotic post-war situation, which opportunities will open up for “politically gifted” people, can not yet be seen. However, it can already be determined which qualifications a professional politician must possess. They are: “Passion—sense of responsibility—common sense” (ibid., 62). Weber explains these qualities as follows: “Passion in the sense of objectivity: passionate commitment to a ‘cause’, to the god or demon who is its master” (ibid.). But passion, even if it is more than just “sterile excitement”, is not enough. “It does not make one a politician if, as service in a ‘cause’, it does not also make responsibility towards this very cause the decisive guiding principle of action” (ibid.). And finally, “and this is the decisive psychological quality of the politician—the common sense, the ability to let the realities take effect on oneself with inner composure and calm, that is, the distance to things and people” (ibid.). It is noteworthy that Weber, who is giving his lecture as a scientist, does not make any substantive determination of the “cause” to which the politician is passionately committed. He expresses himself, in accordance with his demand for the “value neutrality” of the sciences, neutrally. He says: “What the cause looks like, in the service of which the politician seeks and uses power, is a matter of faith. It can serve national or human, social and ethical or cultural, worldly or religious goals, it can be driven by a strong belief in ‘progress’—no matter in what sense—or reject this kind of belief coldly […] some belief must always be there. Otherwise, the curse

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of creaturely insignificance would indeed weigh on the outwardly strongest political successes” (ibid., 65). There can be no generally binding political goal, because here too “ultimately worldviews collide with each other, between which must be chosen ” (ibid.). But whatever goal the politician chooses, in every case he needs an ethical orientation. All “ethically oriented action”—according to Weber—“is under two fundamentally different, irreconcilable opposites […] it can be ‘conscience-ethical’ or ‘responsibility-ethical’ oriented” (see quotation). As an example of the conscience-ethical orientation, Weber names Christianity, but also the convinced “syndicalist”. The Christian only obeys the commands of God “and leaves the success of God to him”; the one acting responsibly accepts, “that one has to take responsibility for the (foreseeable) consequences of one’s actions” (ibid.). Regardless of which ethics one chooses, every ethics is confronted with a problem. Weber observes: “No ethics in the world can avoid the fact that the achievement of ‘good’ purposes is often linked to the fact that one takes morally questionable or at least dangerous means and the possibility or even the probability of bad side effects into account, and no ethics in the world can determine: when and to what extent the ethically good purpose ‘sanctifies’ the ethically dangerous means and side effects” (Weber 1999, 71). In the political situation of his time, this problem acquires special urgency. Even before the end of the war, “the revolutionary socialists” were faced with the question of whether it might make sense to take a few more years of war into account in order to then achieve the situation of “revolution” with greater certainty or to end the war and give up the revolution. One direction in this movement chose the first variant. They were willing to take a large number of war dead into account in order to achieve a goal that “every scientifically trained socialist” would judge to be the result “again a bourgeois economy would arise, which could only have shed the feudal elements and dynastic remnants” (ibid., 72). Weber sums up skeptically: “For this modest result therefore: ‘a few more years of war’!” (ibid.). Another feature of the ethic of conviction concerns the repeatedly observed sudden rejection of the ethical maxim previously represented, i.e.: “In the world of reality, however, we always make the experience again that the ethicist of conviction suddenly turns into the chiliastic prophet, that, for example, those who have just preached ‘love against violence’ call for violence in the next moment—to the last violence, which would then bring about the state of destruction of all violence” (ibid., 73). It is the wellknown call to the “last battle”. But now Weber does not quote the workers’

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battle song, but says: It is “just like our military told the soldiers before every offensive: it would be the last, it would bring victory and then peace” (ibid.). A fundamental problem of the ethicist of conviction is that he cannot bear the “ethical irrationality of the world”. “He is a ‘rationalist’ in the cosmic-ethical sense” (ibid.). His rationalist thesis is: “Good can only lead to good, evil can only lead to evil” (ibid.). But this thesis is untenable. “Not only the whole course of world history, but also every unqualified examination of everyday experience says the opposite. The development of all religions of the earth is based on the fact that the opposite is true” (ibid.). It is—as Weber says—simply not true “that only good can come from good and only evil from evil, but often the opposite. Whoever does not see this is indeed politically a child” (ibid., 74). Every actor, every person, must live with the fact of the ethical irrationality of the world. For the politician, the problem is exacerbated because politics always has to do with violence. Weber notes: “The specific means of legitimate violence in the hands of human associations as such is what determines the peculiarity of all ethical problems of politics” (ibid., 77). Anyone who wants to engage in politics must be aware of the “ethical paradoxes and his responsibility for what can become from him under their pressure” (ibid., 78). The one who seriously feels obliged to the “acosmist” love of humanity and goodness, such as Jesus of Nazareth or Franz von Assisi, is oriented towards a kingdom that is “not of this world”. But whoever wants to act politically in this world must renounce this principle, because political action, “which works with violent means and on the basis of responsibility ethics, endangers the ‘salvation of the soul’” (ibid., 79). Nevertheless, conscience ethics and responsibility ethics do not exclude each other completely. Weber gives the example of a situation in which a “mature person”, who feels obliged to responsibility ethics, comes to a point where he says: “‘I can not do otherwise, here I stand.’ That is something that is humanly real and affects. Because this situation must of course for every one of us, who is not inwardly dead, can occur someday. In this respect, conscience ethics and responsibility ethics are not absolute opposites, but complements, which together only make up the real human being, the one who can have the ‘vocation to politics’ can ” (ibid., 81). Weber’s influence is initially limited to the field of sociology. He has become a classic of sociological thought beyond Germany. The “value judgment dispute” triggered by him has invigorated the scientific-theoretical debate and found a continuation in the “positivism dispute in German sociology”. Habermas has received decisive impulses from Weber. Weber’s theses

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on the “capitalist spirit” have found worldwide attention, even if individual findings have been criticized in detail (cf. Heins 2010, 110). His influence on representatives of a political liberalism is also undisguised, for example with Dahrendorf (cf. Dahrendorf 1974). Within the philosophical debate, his considerations on ethics have led to the fact that responsibility ethics has secured a fixed place within the competing ethical concepts to secure.

2 Freedom and responsibility (Sartre) “The atheistic existentialism I represent is more coherent. It explains: if God does not exist, then at least there is a being for which the existence of essence precedes, a being that exists before it can be defined by any concept, and this being is man. […] But if existence really precedes essence, man is responsible for what he is. So the first intention of existentialism is to bring every man into possession of himself and to burden him with the total responsibility for his existence. And when we say that man is responsible for himself, we do not mean that he is responsible for his strict individuality, but for all men. […]. When we say that man chooses himself, we mean that each of us chooses himself, but we also mean that, choosing himself, he chooses all men at the same time. In fact, there is no action for us that, creating the man we want to be, does not also at the same time create an image of the man as we think he should be. To choose to be this or that is at the same time to affirm the value of what we choose, because we can never choose evil; what we choose is always good, and nothing can be good for us without being good for all. If, on the other hand, existence precedes essence and we also exist and want to shape the image of ourselves, then this image is valid for all and for our entire epoch. So our responsibility is much greater than we can imagine, because it affects the entire human race.” (Jean-Paul Sartre: Existentialism is a Humanism. In: Collected Works. Philosophical Writings I. Vol. 4. Reinbek 1994, 120 ff.) Jean-Paul Sartre is born in Paris in 1905. He studies at the École Normale Supérieure from 1924 to 1929 and is a high school teacher in Le Havre in the years 1931 to 1934. As a scholarship holder, he studied German phenomenology and existential philosophy in Berlin in 1933/1934, for example Heidegger, Jaspersand Scheler. Afterwards he is a high school teacher again in Le Havre, Laon and Paris. In 1939 he is called up for military service and falls into German captivity in 1940/1941. After his liberation, he participated in the resistance against the German occupation and, together with

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Maurice Merleau-Ponty, founded the resistance group Socialisme et liberté (cf. Lévy 2002, 368ff.). In 1943 his existentialist main work Das Sein und das Nichts (Being and Nothing ness ) appears. Since 1945 he has been living as a free writer in Paris. In the course of the development of the Cold War, Sartre declared himself in 1952 to be a critical companion of the communists, but sharply criticized the suppression of the uprising in Hungary by the Soviet Union in 1956. With a group of intellectuals, he published a manifesto against colonialism in 1960 and committed himself to the political autonomy of Algeria. In 1964 he refused the Nobel Prize for Literature awarded to him. From 1966 he took part in the Russell Tribunal, which aimed at the condemnation of American war crimes in Vietnam (Russell/Sartre 1971). On the occasion of the “Prague Spring” in 1968, the final break with the Communist Party occurred. He was involved in the student protest movement of May 1968 and sympathized with the Maoist Left (de Beauvoir 1981, 27). Sartre died in Paris in 1980 (cf. Cohen-Solal 1991; Pleger 2018, 279f.). In all his writings, in his literary as well as in his philosophical and political writings, Sartre represents the principle of freedom in a radicality as perhaps only Fichte before him. However, he is not an idealist like this. He rehabilitates the “Ding an sich” (“Thing in itself ”) rejected in idealism. The distinction between “An-sich-sein” (“In-itself-being”) and “Für-sich-sein” (“For-itself-being”) becomes the basis of his anthropology for him. It leads him to the fundamental distinction between human beings and things. Things are characterized by their “An-sich-sein” (“In-itself-being”); they are what they are. The human being, on the other hand, is not what he is. He can negate the given; he moves in a realm of possibilities. In the possibility of referring back to himself, he is a “Für-sich-sein” (“For-itself-being”). Through the ability of reflexivity, he becomes a subject to which things stand as objects. For Sartre, the human being is a subject. The realm of possibilities opens up freedom of choice to the human subject. Radical freedom consists in self-choice. By choosing itself, the human subject designs itself. It creates its own essence, its own being. What the human being brings along at birth is its existence, its pure being. Its essence, however, it creates itself. The human being is the only being “for which the existence of the essence precedes” (see quotation). In contrast to the biblical creation doctrine, according to which it is God who creates the human being in his image, the atheistic existentialism represented by Sartre is characterized by the fact that it emphasizes that the human being “is first of all nothing. It will only then, and it will be as it has created itself. Consequently, there is no human nature, since there is no God to invent it. […] the human being is nothing other than what it makes of itself. That is the first principle of

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existentialism. That is also what we call subjectivity and what we accuse us of under this very name. But what do we want to say with it other than that the human being has a greater dignity than a stone or a table? We want to say that the human being […] throws itself into the future, and what is conscious of itself designs itself into the future. The human being is initially a subjectively experienced design” (Sartre 1994 a, 120f.). Sartre illustrates the way in which a human being designs itself in its actions with the following example: “We observe a waiter in the café. He has lively and eager movements, something too precise, something too fast, he comes to the guests with a step that is too lively, he bows with too much zeal […] His whole behavior looks like a game to us. […] He plays, he enjoys it. But what is he playing? You don’t have to observe him for long to realize: he plays waiter” (Sartre 1994, 139f.). But in order to be able to play this role, to be able to recognize and confirm himself in his role, he needs an audience—the guests. The subject, which designs itself in freedom, needs the other subject, which recognizes it in its subjectivity. Sartre remarks: “In order to arrive at any truth about myself, I have to go through the other. The other is indispensable for my existence, as indeed also for the knowledge I have of myself. Under these conditions, the discovery of my innermost also discovers the other as a freedom opposed to me, which only thinks and wills for or against me. So we immediately discover a world that we will call intersubjectivity, and in this world the human being decides what he is and what the others are” (1994 a, 133). The other subject differs from a thing in that the subject is confronted with the other subject’s freedom. Sartre’s concept of freedom is subject to various objections. He himself discusses the most important ones. The first, obvious one is the reference to the situation of a prisoner. Sartre explains: “We therefore do not say that a prisoner is always free to leave prison, which would be absurd […], but that he is always free to try to escape […] he can design his escape and inform himself about the value of his design by starting an action” (Sartre 1994, 837). The past has a quite different character, representing something necessary, unchangeable. Even the memory of it is not manipulable. But in the act of remembering, we endow the past with meaning only by our current, free designs, which are directed towards the future. The meaning of the past depends on my present design (cf. ibid., 860). But what about the fact that people can be swept away by emotions to actions that cancel out their free decision? Sartre rejects this view categorically. It is, for example, not sadness that determines me in my being. On the

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contrary, it is consciousness that “is affected by sadness” (ibid., 143). The same applies to passion. Sartre says: “The existentialist does not believe in the power of passion. He will never say that a beautiful passion is an all-encompassing flood that fatefully determines people to certain actions and is therefore an excuse. He means that the person is responsible for his passion” (Sartre 1994 a, 125). With this, Sartre also contradicts the power of the unconscious, which is emphasized in psychoanalysis by Freud (cf. Sartre 1994, 956). But Sartre also emphasizes the radicality and ambivalence of freedom. He says: “In fact, we are a freedom that chooses, but we do not choose to be free: we are condemned to freedom” (ibid., 838). Sartre rejects any determinism. He says: “There is no determinism, man is free, man is freedom” (Sartre 1994 a, 125). The mistake of the determinist lies in the fact that he makes man a thing, the subject an object and the “For-itself-being” to an “In-itself-being”. Properly understood, this means: “So the rejection of freedom can only be understood as an attempt to understand oneself as an in-itself-being […]. Psychologically, this is an attempt for each of us to take the drives and motives as things. One tries to endow them with permanence: one tries to conceal from oneself that their nature and their weight depend at every moment on the meaning that I give them.” (Sartre 1994, 764). At the end of his existentialist main work Being and Nothingness, which bears the subtitle An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology, Sartre pointed out that an ontology cannot formulate “moral prescriptions”, nevertheless it can “hint at what an ethics can be that takes on its responsibilities towards a human reality in situation ” (ibid., 1068ff.). This remark is enlightening. In his posthumous writings on moral philosophy, Sartre also did not develop a deontological ethics. He rejects a metaphysical ethics that prescribes duties to humans from transcendental norms. Nor does he make any borrowings from ancient ethics, for which the striving for happiness belongs to human nature; because for him there is no human nature. In contrast, the concept of responsibility is guiding for his ethics, and it runs through his entire philosophical work. It can already be found thematically in Being and Nothingness. The ethics of responsibility does not say what man wants by nature, nor what he should do. Responsibility is rather a “fact” that is inseparably linked to the “facticity of freedom” (ibid., 838). Man is responsible for his actions. He cannot free himself from it, nor can he excuse himself with reference to unfortunate circumstances. Sartre explains the connection between freedom and responsibility as follows: “We are alone, without excuses. I would like to express this with the words: man is condemned to be free (”l’homme est condamné à être libre“). Condemned

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because he did not create himself, and yet free because, once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does” (Sartre 1994 a, 125). He defines responsibility as follows: “We take the word ‘responsibility’ in its banal sense of ‘consciousness (of ) being the undisputed originator of an event or an object’” (Sartre 1994, 950). His responsibility does not only concern his own actions; because by his own choice he creates himself, he also brings forth an “image of man”, and this image is “valid for all and our entire epoch”. Even more: his responsibility concerns “the entire human race” (see quote). Sartre’s responsibility ethic differs from Kant’s metaphysical ethics. For him, the starting point is not the “pure practical reason” containing a categorical imperative, but rather the individual actions through which man creates himself. Nevertheless, a proximity to Kant is unmistakable. It consists in the fact that for both of them “humanity” is an ethical magnitude that becomes the standard by which the moral quality of the action is to be examined. The proximity to Kant becomes clear in the following statement by Sartre: “Everything happens as if with every human being the whole of humanity had its gaze fixed on his actions, and were to orient itself according to his actions. And every human being must say to himself: Am I also the one who has the right to act in such a way that humanity can orient itself according to my deeds?” (Sartre 1994 a, 123). Sartre makes it clear that the freedom, which includes total responsibility, is frightening. He is then accused in the newspaper Action published by the Communists of representing an “ethics of quietism of fear” (Sartre 1994 a, 92). Sartre replies to this in December 1944 with a “clarification”. First of all, he emphasizes that existentialism, which defines man through action, is of course “not quietism”. This is not the case with the concept of fear. He says: “If man is not, but creates himself, and if, in creating himself, he takes on the responsibility for the whole of mankind, if there is neither a value nor a morality that is a priori given, but if we have to decide alone in each case, without support, without guidance and yet for everyone, how should we not be afraid when we have to act? […] To put it precisely: Fear is by no means an obstacle to action, but rather its condition, and it is one with the sense of that oppressive responsibility of all towards all, which is our pain and our greatness ” (ibid., 95). The second accusation that the existentialists were made by the Communists was that of hopelessness. Also here Sartre initially confirms the used term. But he gives it a new, positive turn. He emphasizes, “that hope is the worst obstacle to action” (ibid., 95f.). Hope means trusting that things will turn out for the better on their own. But the question is: “Can we hope

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that the war will end all by itself and without us, that the Nazis will reach out to us, that the privileged of the capitalist society […] will give up their privileges? If we hope for all this, we only need to put our hands in our lap” (ibid., 96). In reality—so Sartre—hopelessness means nothing other than the recognition that man with his “infinite responsibilities” is alone and can only rely on himself. He has no “other fate than the one he will forge on this earth” (ibid.). By no means is this type of hopelessness an expression of pessimism. On the contrary: “Just as fear does not differ from the sense of responsibility, hopelessness is one with the will”; with hopelessness begins the true optimism: the optimism of those who expect nothing, who know that they have no right and nothing is due to them, who are happy to rely on themselves and to act alone for the good of all” (ibid.). For Sartre there is no fate that man would have to submit to, but only one that he himself will “forge”. He cannot free himself from the responsibility for it. He explains this radical thesis with three examples: birth, war and illness. The first two can be found in his work Being and Nothingness, which was written during the Second World War; the third in the 1947/1948 essays Drafts for a Moral Philosophy, which were published posthumously. In all three cases, Sartre’s argumentation contradicts the common understanding of fate. For every situation a person gets into, he is responsible, even if he is not its originator, i.e. in the strict sense not responsible for it. To assume responsibility means: to respond to a situation with an action. This is already evident from the first example. Sartre’s thesis is: Man is also responsible for his birth. To the obvious objection: “I did not ask to be born,” Sartre replies with the observation that man is indeed thrown into the world, but “not in the sense that I am exposed and passive in a hostile universe, like the plank that floats on the water, but on the contrary in the sense that I suddenly find myself alone and without help, engaged in a world for which I bear the entire responsibility, without being able to escape this responsibility, no matter what I do” (Sartre 1994, 954). Yes, even the attempt to escape responsibility through suicide, I am responsible for. I am also responsible for how I relate to the fact of my birth. In any case, this position is an expression of my self-choice, and it includes the fact of my birth. This fact is never given to me “raw,” but belongs to the reconstruction of my own current designs. Birth is an integral part of my self-relationship. “So I choose in a certain sense, to be born” (ibid., 954). My “various attitudes towards my birth, that is, towards the fact that I realize a presence in the world, are nothing other than different ways of taking on this birth with full responsibility and making it mine.” (ibid.).

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Similarly, Sartre argues in the case of the example of war. He first emphasizes: Taking responsibility for what happens to me, for example a war, does not mean accepting it. The “absolute responsibility […] is simply the logical taking on of the consequences of our freedom” (ibid., 951). The consequences of freedom are that “as a human being I am always on the level of what happens to me, because what happens to a human being through other human beings and through himself can only be human” (ibid.). Even the “most horrible situations of war, the worst tortures create no inhuman situation: there is no inhuman situation” (ibid.). Even the so-called inhuman is something human. But what is decisive is: Every situation in which I find myself is “mine.” This also applies to the war, i.e. “if I am drafted into a war, this war is my war, it is according to my image, and I deserve it. I deserve it first of all because I could always have avoided it through suicide or desertion: these last possibilities must always be present to us when it comes to judging a situation. Since I have not avoided it, I have chosen it […] If I have therefore preferred the war to death or disgrace, then everything happens as if I bore the entire responsibility for this war” (ibid., 951f.). In view of this situation, the fact that others have explained it becomes completely irrelevant. By taking responsibility for this war, my self-choice remains connected to it, i.e. “by committing myself for or against it, I can no longer distinguish my self-choice from the choice of this war: to live this war means to choose it through it and to choose it through my self-choice” (ibid., 952). In discussing the example of illness, Sartre clarifies the aspects of the connection between situation and freedom, between fate and responsibility that have already been mentioned. Every human being is determined by his facticity. This means that “to the extent that I am passive, I am affected by the world order in my facticity. If, for example, I enter an infected area, I will be affected, that is, infected. I am then, for example, tubercular” (Sartre 2005, 754). The illness represents a fate; because through it the human being is limited in his possibilities. If he was, for example, “an actor or athlete”, he can no longer pursue these activities. It looks as if his life with his “bouquet of possibilities” has now been reduced to a few. But this idea does not adequately represent reality. Already the way in which the human being takes up the new situation is an expression of his freedom. He can try to cling to the lost possibilities, deny them, resign himself to them or try to regain them. But what is decisive is that new possibilities arise. Sartre’s radical thesis is: “A sick person has no more and no less possibilities than a healthy person; he has his range of possibilities like the other, and he has to decide on his situation […]. In other words, the illness is a conditio within which the human

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being is again free and without excuse. He has to take responsibility for his illness. His illness is an excuse for not realizing his possibilities as a non-sick person, but not for his possibilities as a sick person, which are just as numerous” (ibid., 755). The sick person is not responsible for his illness; because he did not cause it. It is something that “transforms, undermines, crushes, and shatters him from the outside”, but does not take away his freedom; because “for my living life as a sick person” I am finally also “responsible for what I am not responsible for” (ibid., 756). Sartre sticks to this thought, even if he later emphasizes more strongly how limited the human being’s “room for manoeuvre” is in society (cf. Sartre 1988, 164f.). Sartre’s history of effects extends far beyond the field of philosophy. His novels and plays have received worldwide attention in the decades since the end of the Second World War and inspired other writers and filmmakers. His political commitment has, with the example of the Algerian War, not only drawn the attention of the French public to the problem of colonialism. His confrontation with communism called into question an ideological Marxism. He gave voice to the protest against the Vietnam War. In the field of philosophy, the atheistic existentialism represented by him has become an independent position within the spectrum of other existentialist currents. His considerations on ethics make the connection between freedom and responsibility impressively clear.

3 Communicative reason and discourse (Apel/Habermas) “I call ideal a speech situation in which communications are not only not impeded by external contingent interventions, but also not by compulsions which arise from the structure of communication itself. The ideal speech situation excludes systematic distortions of communication. Namely, the communication structure only then does not create compulsions when, for all discourse participants, a symmetrical distribution of the chances to choose and perform speech acts is given. […] If it is true that we can and must always trust ourselves to distinguish a reasonable, i.e. argumentatively achieved and at the same time truth-guaranteeing consensus from a merely forced or deceptive consensus ultimately only by reference to an ideal speech situation; if we may further assume that in every empirical case it cannot be clearly established whether an ideal speech situation is given or not – then the following explanation remains: The ideal speech situation is neither an empirical phenomenon nor a mere construct, but an unavoidable,

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reciprocally made assumption in discourses. This assumption can, it does not have to be counterfactual; but even if it is made counterfactual, it is a fiction operatively effective in communication. I therefore prefer to speak of an anticipation, of a foresight of an ideal speech situation.” (Jürgen Habermas: Truth theories. In: Ders.: Preliminary studies and supplements to the theory of communicative action. Frankfurt a. M. 1984, 177 u. 180) The ethics of communication and discourse was developed by Karl-Otto Apel and Jürgen Habermas, both of whom studied in Bonn and were students of Erich Rothacker. Apel, born in Düsseldorf in 1922, was awarded his doctorate in 1950 with a dissertation on Heidegger. He habilitated in 1961 in Mainz with his work The Idea of Language in the Tradition of Humanism from Dante to Vico. From 1962 to 1969 he was Professor of Philosophy at the University of Kiel, from 1969 to 1972 at the University of Saarbrücken and from 1972 until his retirement in 1990 at the University of Frankfurt am Main (cf. Reese-Schäfer, Hamburg 1990). The decisive impulse for his communication ethics oriented towards conversation was surprisingly not received by Apel from the structure of the Platonic dialogue and also not from the classical German language philosophers Johann Georg Hamann, Johann Gottfried Herder and Wilhelm von Humboldt, but from American pragmatism. It was Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) who, in the semiotics developed by him, designed a pragmatic theory of truth which replaced the traditional correspondence theory with a consensus theory. His idea was that the sciences were not able to claim correspondence between sentence and state of affairs for the results of their research, but that only in the long run in an “ideal community” could a reasonable, i.e. truth-implying consensus be achieved. This means that “the generality of researchers”, i.e. “every scientific intelligence must be satisfied with the statement”—is not just actually. (Peirce 2000 I, 239). Apel quotes this thesis of Peirce as follows: “The real … is that (more precisely: the object of the opinion) which, sooner or later, information and reasoning would finally result in, and which is therefore independent of the vagaries of me and you. Thus, the very origin of the conception of reality shows that this conception essentially involves the notion of a Community, without definite limits, and capable of a definite increase of knowledge” (Apel 1973, II, 173). This model, which aims at theoretical truth, transfers Apel to the field of ethics. The goal of his ethics of communication is to arrive at ethical statements and norms that are just as binding as those sought in the field of science. To grasp this new problem, nothing less than a

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fundamental “transformation of philosophy” is needed (Apel 1973). Specifically, this means that Kant’s “transcendental subject” must be extended to a language-oriented “transcendental intersubjectivity”. In this way, philosophy acquires the character of a transcendental pragmatics. The transcendental intersubjectivity forms the “apriori of the communication community”, which is the prerequisite for every real communication community. But communication means understanding with the help of language. Understanding within the real communication community therefore takes place against the background of transcendental intersubjectivity, i.e. it has the “apriori of the communication community” as a prerequisite. Apel formulates this approach as follows: “The problem to which the modern discussion has led seems to be to renew Kant’s question about the conditions of the possibility and validity of scientific knowledge as a question about the possibility of an intersubjective understanding of the sense and truth of sentences or sentence systems. This would mean that Kant’s epistemological criticism would have to be transformed from a consciousness analysis into a sense criticism as a sign analysis; its ‘highest point’ would not be the already achievable objective unity of representations in an ‘consciousness in general’ assumed to be intersubjective, but the unity of understanding to be achieved in an unlimited intersubjective consensus through consistent sign interpretation” (ibid., 163f.). The concept of transcendental pragmatics is associated with the claim of an “ultimate foundation” of ethics (ibid., 405). But this appears to be more problematic than ever today. It is not only the widespread cultural relativism that calls it into question, but also the assumption of the “value-neutral” objectivity of the sciences on the one hand and the subjective arbitrariness of individual moral judgments on the other hand, which can be found in modern societies. But there are also considerable objections from professional philosophers. For example, Karl Popper and Hans Albert argue that ultimate foundations are impossible because they inevitably lead to the following aporias: The first is that a further justification can be demanded for every justification and thus an infinite regress results; the second, that justification-needing premises are used and thus a ‘logical circle’ arises; the third finally, that the series of justifications is interrupted by a dogmatic assertion (cf. Albert 1980, 13). But the arguments of the opponents of the ultimate justification of ethics are faulty; because everyone who argues is already a participant in a community of communication that is justified in the “a priori of the community of communication”. “But anyone who does not participate in the discussion cannot even raise the question of the justification of ethical principles”

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(ibid., 421). This means that “everyone who speaks or even acts meaningfully is already participating in a virtual discussion” (ibid.). Of course, this does not exclude deception and lies. Rather, every participant in a community of communication must confirm the understanding “willingly at every moment of his life” (ibid.). What is decisive, however, is that deception and lies only succeed if they pretend to be true. The claim to truth is immanent in the statement. The “a priori of the community of communication” does not only concern theoretical statements, but also all practical ones. It is connected with the thought of “justifying all human claims (including the implicit claims of people on people contained in actions and institutions)” (ibid., 424). These practical claims also include human needs. “Human ‘needs’ are ethically relevant as interpersonal communicable ‘claims’; they are to be recognized if they can be justified interpersonal by arguments” (ibid., 425). Apel combines his transcendental pragmatics with considerations of a situation-related ethics of responsibility. Following Max Weber, he emphasizes that the person acting responsibly has to bear the consequences of his actions. He admits that in the political field, maxims of conscience-based ethics often cannot be maintained. “For example, it is often not possible for the politician—and not only for him—to comply with the fundamental principle of every communication ethics (as well as the Kantian ethics), which forbids lies, with regard to the consequences to be borne. The same applies to the prohibition of treating a person merely as a means and not also as an end in itself ” (ibid., 428). Every person who acts is confronted with the “problem of responsible situation assessment and situation decision, which […] cannot be taken away from anyone” (ibid., 434f.). The question is whether, with this approach to forms of “modern, existentialist situational ethics”, the field is now being left to “irrationalism”. Apel denies this consequence; because in every situation the claims of a communicative ethics remain at least as “regulative principles”. He relies on Sartre, who—according to Apel—emphasizes: The individual can, even if he “apparently violates all moral norms”, “act on behalf of humanity […] In this case, every other person who may want to put himself in his position would have to give him his consent afterwards and thus establish the fulfilment of the moral norms of the communication community (ibid., 428)”. There is no logical contradiction between the real communication community in which every actor is located and the ideal one which corresponds to the norms of communicative ethics, but there is a “dialectical” contradiction. “The dissolution of this contradiction can only be expected from the historical realization of the ideal communication community in the real one;

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yes, one must morally postulate this historical dissolution of the contradiction” (ibid., 430f.). In his book Discourse and Responsibility published in 1988, Apel establishes the connection of communicative and responsibility ethics in the context of the current historical situation of humanity. It is determined by two risks. One is “the danger of a nuclear destruction war”, the other “the perhaps even greater danger of the destruction of the human eco - and biosphere” (Apel 1988, 42). Both are the result of advanced technology. The moral challenge of these dangers is that the technologically highly equipped homo faber no longer experiences the consequences of his actions immediately. The pilot who drops an atomic bomb in war does not experience the immeasurable, destructive effect of his deed, and the ecologically catastrophic consequences of the felling of rainforests only become apparent decades later. These facts make it clear that homo faber is far ahead of homo sapiens. “Technical ratio” and “practical reason” are far apart. “Homo sapiens” must realize “that it is now—perhaps at the last minute—his task to close the gap that has arisen” (ibid., 44). It is high time to recognize “the responsibility of reason ” (ibid.). These dangers also have an impact on the non-abandoned demand for the realization of an ideal communication community that has the goal of “emancipation”. But it appears in a new light. The aforementioned current dangers make it clear that this goal can only be achieved under the condition of the “preservation of the existence of the real communication community” (ibid., 39). Both aspects belong together. “It follows from this that in the concrete historical situations, a mediation always has to be accomplished between the demand for the realization of the ideal communication community and the demand for the preservation of the existence of the real communication community” (ibid.). Jürgen Habermas is also born in 1929 in Düsseldorf. He studies at the universities of Göttingen, Zurich and Bonn and is awarded a PhD in 1954 with a dissertation on Schellingby Rothacker. After his time as assistant to Adornoand Horkheimer at the ‘Institute for Social Research’ in Frankfurt a. M., he habilitates in the field of political science with his work The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Investigations into a Category of the Bourgeois Society with Wolfgang Abendroth at the University of Marburg. Even before the procedure is completed, he receives an extraordinary professorship for philosophy from Hans-Georg Gadamer in Heidelberg at the University of Heidelberg. From 1964 to 1971 he is a regular professor of philosophy and sociology at the University of Frankfurt a. M. From 1971 to 1980 he leads the ‘Max Planck Institute for the Study of the Conditions

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of Scientific and Technical World’ in Starnberg together with Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker. In 1983 he returns to Frankfurt a. M. and is professor of philosophy there until his retirement in 1994 (cf. Iser/Strecker 2010). Habermas joins his considerations to the ‘Critical Theory of Society’ by Horkheimer, Adorno and Herbert Marcuse, which Horkheimer had initiated with his programmatic essay “Traditional and Critical Theory” from the year 1937. In contrast to traditional theory, whose goal is the “classification of facts into existing conceptual systems” (Horkheimer 1972, 25), the Critical Theory—according to Horkheimer—pursues a practical interest. It is the “interest in the abolition of social injustice” (ibid., 56). It does not aim “at the increase of knowledge as such, but at the emancipation of man from enslaving conditions” (ibid., 58). Critical theory is primarily ideology criticism. This also becomes the guiding motive of Adorno’s ethical considerations. In his book “Minima Moralia. Reflections from a damaged life”, published in 1951, he restricted himself to criticizing the prevailing social conditions without developing ethical-practical perspectives for a life beyond alienation. Skeptical of all utopias, he no longer shares the hope for a revolution in the sense of Marx. His considerations from 1944, formulated in the time of the war, culminate in the resigned statement: “There is no right life in the wrong” (Adorno 1969, 42). Habermas remains true to the basic intention of the Critical Theory of “emancipation of man”, but frees it from its “negativist cul-de-sac” (Brunkhorst) by giving the—newly established democracy in Germany in 1949— chances for the development of a “rule-free dialogue”. Approaches for this concept can already be found in his habilitation thesis. His investigations on the structural change of the public find a decisive starting point in Kant’s writing “Answering the question: What is Enlightenment?” from the year 1784. He sees in him an advocate of the “mediation of politics and morality” and in his demand for a “public use of reason” his own intention clearly expressed (cf. Habermas 1975, 129). But the principle of “publicity” advocated by Kant has been deprived of its political-moral dimension in modern societies because public opinion is itself “culturally industrialized” (ibid., 289). Nevertheless,—so Habermas—“the concept of public opinion must be held in a comparative sense, because the constitutional reality of the welfare state must be understood as the process in the course of which a politically functioning public can be realized” (ibid., 288). In his inaugural lecture “Knowledge and Interest” at the University of Frankfurt a. M., the idea of the “public use of reason” is condensed in accordance with Weber’s concept of the “interest in knowledge” (cf. Weber

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1988, 161) to a concept of different “guiding interests in knowledge” (Habermas 1969, 155). They are part of a “critical theory of science that avoids the pitfalls of positivism” (ibid.). There are firstly a “technical” interest that lies at the “empirical-analytical” sciences, secondly a “practical” interest that is to be assigned to the “historical-hermeneutic” sciences and thirdly the “emancipatory interest in knowledge”, which goes into the “approach of critically oriented sciences” (ibid., 155). The idea underlying the technical interest in knowledge is that “experimental scientific theories gain access to reality under the guiding interest in the possible informative securing and expanding of success-controlled action. This is the interest in knowledge in the technical disposal of reified processes” (ibid., 157). In contrast, it is to be assumed that “hermeneutic research gains access to reality under the guiding interest in the preservation and expansion of intersubjectivity of possible action-oriented communication. Understanding of meaning is oriented, according to its structure, to possible consensus of actors within a traditional self-understanding. This is what we call, in contrast to the technical, the practical interest in knowledge” (ibid., 158). The “systematic action sciences ”, to which economics, sociology and politics belong, have the goal of producing nomological knowledge. But a “critical social science” does not stop there. It has the interest of capturing “ideologically frozen, but in principle changeable dependency relationships”. Its task is the “critique of ideology”. It thus solves, “just as well as psychoanalysis […] a process of reflection”, which takes on the character of a “self-reflection”. “This frees the subject from the dependence on hypostatized powers. Self-reflection is determined by an emancipatory interest in knowledge. The critically oriented sciences share it with philosophy” (ibid., 159). Self-reflection is connected with the “interest in maturity” and this is articulated in the medium of language. “With its structure, maturity is set for us. With the first sentence, the intention of a general and unforced consensus is clearly expressed” (ibid., 163). The goal of the interest in maturity is an “emancipated society” that unfolds into a “ dialog free of domination all with all” (ibid., 164). In it, not only a casual, “mutually formed identity of the ego” results, but also the agreement of statements. “In this respect, the truth of statements is based on the anticipation of the successful life” (ibid.). While the practical and emancipatory interest can be combined without force, there is a competition relationship to the technical interest. In his essay “Technology and Science” as Ideology from the year 1968, Habermas has addressed this issue. He points out that the technical interest, which is oriented on the model of a purpose-rational, success-controlled action, is

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becoming increasingly the prevailing pattern of modern industrial society. He explains this situation as follows: “If one sees with Arnold Gehlen the inner logic of the technical development in that the functional circle of purpose-rational action is step by step […] transferred to the level of machines, then that technocratic intention could be understood as the last stage of this development” (ibid., 82). This intention becomes an “ideology […], which disregards practical questions” (ibid., 83). The technology as ideology pervades all areas of life. It makes man the object of a “success-controlled action” and eliminates the difference between technology and practice. “Thus, the new ideology violates an interest that is based on one of the two fundamental conditions of our cultural existence: language, and more precisely the form of socialization and individualization, determined by everyday communication. This interest extends to the preservation of an intersubjectivity of understanding as well as to the establishment of a communication free of domination. Technocratic consciousness lets this practical interest disappear behind the one on the expansion of our technical disposal” (ibid., 91). In his essay “Truth Theories” from 1972, Habermas developed a consensus theory of truth that also contains his discourse ethics. In contrast to the classical correspondence theory, which interprets truth as the agreement or correspondence of statement and state of affairs, for the consensus theory, a claim to truth only exists when a statement is asserted as a fact. The assertion is justified or unjustified, not true or false. The question of the justification of an assertion only arises when the unquestioned agreement about the messages exchanged in communication is called into question. In this situation, the “implicit” claims to validity are problematized. Habermas refers to the exchange of arguments about these claims to validity as discourse (cf. Habermas 1984, 130). With this, a new level of communication is entered. Habermas emphasizes: “Discourses are retrospective and temporary decouplings. The form of communication released from compulsion and pressure of experience makes it possible to restore an understanding of problematic validity claims in situations of disturbed interaction” (ibid., 131). For the claim of the truth of a statement, it is not enough that a subject assigns a predicate to an object, but the potential consent of all other subjects becomes necessary. This means: “In order to distinguish true from false statements, I take reference to the assessment of others—namely to the judgment of all others with whom I could ever enter into a conversation (implicitly including all the conversation partners I could find if my life story were coextensive with the history of mankind). The condition for the truth of statements is the potential consent of all others” (ibid., 136f.).

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In every undisturbed communication, four claims to validity are raised tacitly. They are: comprehensibility, truth, correctness, and truthfulness (cf. ibid., 137). If comprehensibility is not given, we ask: “What do you mean by that?” “What does that mean?” The answer to such questions are “interpretations.” If the truth of a statement is called into question, we answer with “assertions and explanations.” “If the correctness of the norm that lies at the basis of the speech act is problematic, we ask questions of the type: Why did you do that? Why didn’t you act differently? Are you allowed to do that? Shouldn’t you act differently? We answer with justifications. ” (ibid., 138). If we call our interlocutor’s truthfulness into question, we ask: “Is he deceiving me? Is he deceiving himself?” Answers to these questions are not given by him himself, but only through third parties, in a “trial” or in an “analytical conversation.” These claims to validity show that a consensus theory of truth “refers not only to the truth of statements, but also to the correctness of commands or evaluations” (ibid., 137). It therefore includes both a theoretical and a practical discourse. The practical discourse forms the basis of a discourse ethics. But only the claims of truth and correctness can be redeemed discursively, while comprehensibility belongs to the “conditions of communication” and truthfulness represents a non-discursive claim to validity. The consensus theory of truth is a “pragmatic” theory that serves the “process of understanding between subjects capable of language and action.” It “refers indeed to the practice of argumentation in general, but by no means to specific methods of obtaining true statements or correct commands” (ibid., 159). It rather represents “an excellent mode of testing” of theoretical assertions and practical commands or evaluations. Habermas gives an example of a theoretical discourse and one of a practical one. The practical one has the following structure: The command: “You shall return 50,—DM to A by the end of the week” is followed by the explanation demanded by the opponent: “A lent you the money for four weeks.” It is justified by the reference to, for example, the following action norm: “Loans should be repaid within the specified deadlines.” This norm is supported by a “casuistic evidence”, for example by a “series of hints at consequences and side effects of the norm application for the fulfillment of accepted needs”. This includes, for example, the reference: “Loans enable a flexible use of scarce resources” (ibid., 165). The justification in theoretical and practical discourse is carried out “with the help of the principle of universalization” (ibid., 166), i.e. it is addressed to every “speech- and action-capable” subject, regardless of cultural

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differences. It refers to an “ideal speech situation” in which not only the “systematic distortion of communication” is excluded, but in which every participant also has the same chance to “choose and perform speech acts” (see quotation). Habermas assumes that in such an “ideal speech situation” the conditions for a reasonable consensus are fulfilled and, at the same time, the conditions for truth and correctness in a moral-practical sense. He says: “A reasonable consensus can be distinguished from a deceptive one in the last resort only by reference to an ideal speech situation” (ibid., 179). He has great confidence in the ability of speech- and action-capable subjects when he claims that “we actually always trust and must trust ourselves to distinguish a reasonable from a deceptive consensus” (see quotation). The discourse ethics of Apel and Habermas have opened up an additional aspect to the ethics of responsibility. Responsibility is taken seriously in its linguistic dimension, which belongs to it as a personal event. It is closely related to the ethics of the Platonic dialogue without emphasizing it.

XII Ethics and Universal Human Rights

Every ethic is based on an anthropology. This thesis, first clearly stated in ancient philosophy, runs through all further ethical concepts. The ancient ethic sees the striving for happiness, the fulfillment of which is to be understood as agreement (identity) with oneself and others, as the motive of human action (cf. Plato: Politeia 352 a). At the same time, however, it emphasizes that reason is the decisive condition for achieving this goal. The orientation of action towards reason, however, requires freedom. Its existence must be defended against its denial by the determinists. The reasonably desired identity achieved through free action would therefore be what would still be referred to today as a good life. However, the achievement of this goal can only be successful if no one is denied the right to pursue their own goals. This primarily means a guarantee of legal equality and freedom of action. Both demands have their basis in universally recognized human rights. Freedom, reasonable identity and universal human rights represent the decisive criteria for a good life. The fight for human rights has run through European history since the 5th century BC, when for the first time some Sophists in Greece argued that all humans are naturally equal and that the discrimination of “barbarians” by “Hellenes” is not justified. Also, Stoic philosophers in the Hellenistic period advocated the idea of the natural equality of all humans and associated it with the idea of humanity. Nevertheless, they were not able to gain recognition for their insight, and so the disregard for human rights, especially in the form of slavery and racial discrimination, overshadowed history right up to

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the present day. A few key points are sufficient here to summarize the history of human rights. A turning point in the history of the fight for human rights is the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789, which took place as part of the French Revolution, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, which was unanimously adopted by the UN General Assembly of almost all participating nations. Both declarations, like the Sophists before them, base themselves on the same nature of humans and thus on the natural law that applies to all humans. They thereby claim the universal validity of human rights. The disregard for human rights did not stop there, but for the first time in history there is now a generally recognized standard that makes it possible to condemn human rights violations and to call for the observance of the rights of every human. The enforcement of human rights therefore remains an unfinished project. It is also unfinished in the sense that new problems arise that affect the entire human race. These include above all the increasingly clear ecological crisis.

1 Pragmatic Freedom and Reasonable Identity in the Context of Ethics The task of a pragmatic anthropology, according to Kant, is the research of what man, “as a free-acting being, makes of himself, or can and should make” (Kant VI, 399; cf. motto). The pragmatic reason, which is guiding for it, not only thematizes the ought, but also the reality and the possibilities of free action as well as their mediation. The concept of mediation forms the center of a pragmatic and at the same time dialectical ethics—taking into account Plato, Hegel, Apel and Habermas. Its goal is the mediation of opposites and the formation of a reasonable identity. For this, the following arguments are to be presented. First, however, it should be pointed out that serious objections have been raised against the existence of human freedom since time immemorial. They can be summarized under the keyword “determinism”. The most important types shall be named: Historically, religious determinism is at the forefront. In a more radical way than the fate belief anchored in Greek mythology, which still left man the possibility to respond to the vicissitudes of fate with a free action, Luther denies human freedom and emphasizes: There is no free will, because “everything happens out of necessity” (Luther 1961, 174).

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The second type of determinism is put forward by representatives of a physics that interprets nature causally-mechanically. This means that every cause can be unambiguously assigned to a certain effect and that, based on this cause-effect relationship, all further events are determined. One of their leading protagonists was Pierre Simon de Laplace (1749-1827). He drew the theoretical consequence from this interpretation of nature that an omniscient “intelligence” was able to predict any future event with certainty, starting from the present state of the universe, because it would have the “formula” for the calculation of the “movements of the largest world bodies like the lightest atom” (Laplace 2003, 2). Meanwhile, objections have been raised by modern physics against this model. So Werner Heisenberg emphasizes that the “quantum theory” forces us to “basically abandon determinism” (Heisenberg 1962, 28). The third form of determinism is connected with the philosophy of history by Marx. According to this philosophy, the capitalist mode of production “generates its own negation with the necessity of a natural process” (Marx 1962a, 927). In another way, behaviorism denied freedom by describing social behavior as a mechanism whose basis is conditioning. According to Burrhus Frederic Skinner, experimentally confirmed research refutes the assumption that people “could choose between different courses of action and that, in the long run, they would be the shaping of their own destiny” (Skinner 1973, 28). The concept of freedom is a “dead end” for him. In the field of psychology, attention should be paid to the determinism of Freud , who was not only convinced of the determinism of nature, but, on the basis of his discovery of the “power of the unconscious”, represented a “determinism also dominating the soul life” (Freud 1997, 121). However, it can be overcome to a certain extent by “strengthening the ego”. A final attack on freedom is currently taking place in the field of neurophysiology. Thus, Wolf Singer emphasizes that there is no place in the brain where we could “locate the self-determined ego” (Singer 2002, 33). Therefore, the idea of the ​​ human being, “an autonomous, free ego”, would be a “cultural construct” (ibid., 73), which, like the terms “responsibility” and “guilt”, would lose its meaning to the extent that “brain research” would succeed, “to extend their reductionist approach to all relevant levels without gaps” (ibid., 32; see Geyer 2004). But determinism is untenable. Not only is it unclear which of the types it represents should be binding, it is above all not able to justify its own claim to truth. As Epicurus has already made clear, it gets caught in

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a contradiction; because the statement “everything happens according to necessity” is made with the same necessity as the opposite “everything does not happen according to necessity” (Epicurus 1983, 109). Determinism leads to an aporia. It arises precisely from the reductionism praised by Singer. By reducing everything that happens to one level, the determinism destroys the possibility of making statements with a claim to truth about itself. The refutation of determinism is connected with the thought that a true statement only makes sense if it can be assumed that there is a categorical difference between it and the situation to which it refers, i.e. a non-determined relationship. In every true statement, in every proof, this difference is presupposed and can therefore no longer be proven itself. It is a logically necessary assumption. In this respect, the proof of freedom is only negative. Kant was right to point out that freedom cannot be proven theoretically. The human being is—as his argument goes—“in practical terms” free, i.e. “as if his will were also in itself, and in theoretical philosophy, declared to be free” (Kant IV, 83). In this respect, the concept of freedom has an inescapable meaning for the acting human being. The assumption that there would be a consistent determinism for human action can be thought of, but the attempt to prove it leads to a paradox. However, what is decisive is that the deterministic hypothesis remains without meaning for the situation of the acting person. As far as the human being knows his inclinations and motives for action, he can consider them and, in a free decision, reject, approve or modify them; if he does not know them, he can only make his decisions based on his pragmatic power of judgement ‘to the best of his knowledge and conscience’ in a state of partial ignorance. In both cases, his freedom is preserved in a pragmatic sense. In fact, even the brain researchers who deny freedom presuppose freedom in a technical, pragmatic and moral sense when carrying out their experiments. “While their statements deny freedom, their way of life, and not just their private life, but above all their life as researchers, emphatically claims freedom” (Höffe 2015, 346). Höffe calls this a “pragmatic contradiction”. A basic concept of a pragmatic ethics is action. Action is to be understood as a justified doing or leaving, for which the acting person is responsible. Action also requires freedom. It differs from mere behaviour in that the person responsible for the action responds to a problematic situation in the first place and does not merely react; he is responsible in the second sense in that he is the author of this action, which can be attributed to him; he is responsible in the third sense in that he can justify this action to others in a moral

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and legal sense, i.e. he must be able to justify it. His responsibility does not only relate to what he does, but also to what he leaves undone. Also the leaving undone is an action, for which, for example, the omission of assistance would be an example. While the life activity of animals is determined by a complex behaviour in which reflexes and instincts, including social instincts, as well as a technically-practical intelligence and teleonomic actions form a structure of biologically describable facts, which constitute the subject of ethology, human actions have moral relevance. The human being is, as Darwin rightly emphasises, the only living being that can be called moral, because he alone “is able to compare and approve or disapprove of his former and future actions or motives” (Darwin 1982, 140). But the acquisition of this ability is not completed with the emergence of man, but belongs to the process of ego-development of every single human being. It takes place as the development of the infant to the speaking and acting person. The contrast of freedom, understood as “idea”, and the corresponding “practical” freedom on the one hand, and a causal necessity on the other hand, is therefore abstract. A pragmatically relevant freedom arises in that the person recognizes the internal and external limitations of their freedom of action, dissolves them to a certain extent and thus gains a scope of freedom. The pragmatic concept of freedom takes into account the fact that moral insight develops (cf. Höffe 2015, 344), this can also be temporarily or permanently disturbed, and external circumstances can impair action in accordance with this insight. It remains related to the concrete situation. A philosophical ethics is oriented towards reason. This orientation is not self-evident, but must prove itself binding in competition with other concepts of ethics. The decisive step towards a rational ethics took place in Greece in a historical phase which one can designate as the transition “from myth to logos” (cf. Nestle 1975). It is determined by the fact that the myth with its many conflicting gods, lost its power regulating, the political life. (s. section I, 1). Socrates,Plato and Aristotle developed in contrast to this the philosophy as a dialectical, i.e. problem-solving, method of searching for truth and the concept of a good life, which is oriented towards reason. While this orientation remained guiding for classical philosophy and for Greek-Roman Hellenism, the dispute between “faith and reason” was rekindled in the Middle Ages (s. chapter II) and has not lost any of its sharpness up to the present day. The role of the many conflicting gods have now been taken over by the various religions, denominations, world views

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and ideologies. The concept of a reason-oriented ethics therefore remains up-to-date. The question is therefore: How does the relationship between faith and reason, between religion and ethics look today? The answer must be: ambivalent. On the one hand, for example, is the Catholic theologian Hans Küng, who sets the claim of religion against that of reason. He says: “But one thing man cannot do without religion, […] found the unconditional and universality of ethical obligations” (Küng 2011, 75). In his search for a universal ethic, he justifies his rejection of reason with the rhetorical question: “Is there enough of an ‘appeal to reason’, with which one can justify one thing as often as its opposite?” (ibid., 76). Obviously—so Küng—not. That is why he is sure of one thing: the “religions” can “with other authority and conviction than politicians, lawyers and philosophers, bring fundamental principles of elementary humanity to bear” (ibid., 82). Therefore, he claims that only the religions could establish a new “world ethic” in an “interreligious dialogue” (ibid., 169), not the “atheistic ‘goddess of reason’” (ibid., 78). Küng overlooks in this context that everyone who engages in a dialogue claims universality and reason for their arguments. On the other hand, for example, is the Dalai Lama, the religious and political head of the Tibetan people, who in the name of Buddhism declares: “In the name of religions wars were and are being fought, even ‘holy wars’. […] Religions were and are often intolerant. That is why I say that we need a new ethic beyond all religions in the 21st century” (Dalai Lama 2015, 15). His anthropological justification is: “Ethics go deeper and are more natural than religion” (ibid., 11). Nevertheless, he does not oppose religion. For him there is a model of mediation of ethics and religion, which he makes clear with an everyday example: prepared tea. The ethic represents the water, the religion the tea leaves. This means: “We can live without tea, but not without water” (ibid., 17). The water is necessary for life, the religion gives it a specific taste. In this parable is expressed an idea that Hans Jonas, coming from another cultural and religious tradition, has formulated for the present age as follows: “A religion that is not there cannot take over the task of ethics” (Jonas 1984, 58). Reason remains the basis for any unrestricted dialogue and for any universal ethic. But even an ethics of reason characterized in this way raises questions. Does it belong to the concept of reason that it is generally binding and based on voluntary recognition, so that the answer to the question of what is reasonable in the concrete case remains difficult. The concretely reasonable must be determined in each case. This question has already been seen in

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Socratic-Platonic philosophy and answered with a methodological proposal. It is the method of dialogue. The dialogue contains a peculiar circle structure: on the one hand, it requires an agreement on dialogue rules in advance, without which it cannot be conducted; on the other hand, the agreement on binding standards of action is itself the goal of the dialogue. Apel and Habermas have pointed out this circle structure in their discourse ethics (see section XI, 3). But the dialogue cannot replace the situationally necessary action of the person. For this he or she remains dependent on his or her pragmatic power of judgement. It is her task to make decisions in which goals and means are taken into account in advance of what would have to be shown to be reasonable in a dialogue. An ethics that thematizes this connection is pragmatic and dialectical. It includes the idea that not only the goals of action can be shown to be reasonable, but also the means. Sought is a method of reasonable mediation. It should be noted that the situation of man in the world is determined by various problems and conflicts. Action serves essentially the purpose of conflict resolution. The concept of mediation offers itself as the suitable method of ethics. Socrates developed the method of dialogue, the goal of which was to end the dispute of the opponents in the sign of reason. From this, Plato developed the concept of a dialectical ethics. Hegel understood dialectics as a method that overcomes the contradictions in a threefold sense: first, they are “preserved” because no side of the contradiction disappears in favor of the other; second, they are raised to a higher, common level, and thus their antagonistic character is third. The goal of mediation is a reasonable identity. In contrast to the formal-logical identity statement (a = a), which is static, the ethically relevant dialectical concept of identity is the result of a process of overcoming human conflicts. They present themselves, for example, as the “dilemma” of the soul (Plato), as “alienation” and social “struggle” (Hegel, Marx) or as “unleashed technology” (Jonas). A dialectical ethic, which is oriented towards the concept of mediation, contains the following elements: • First, it is oriented towards the goal of a reasonable, good life. This connects it to ancient ethics. It has an individual and a political-social dimension. The reasonable identity is not opposed to the pursuit of happiness, but is its fulfillment. However, it should be emphasized that man is denied a natural identity. The reasonable identity is the result of mediations and a task to be newly performed.

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• Second, it understands the actor as the author of his actions, for which he is just as responsible as for their foreseeable consequences. This includes the claim to be able to justify one’s own action in a dialogue with others. This aspect connects it to the ethics of responsibility (Weber, Jonas, Sartre , Apel, Habermas). • Third, it is universal, i.e. it subjects goals and means of action to the general claim of reason. This connects it to the ethic of practical reason developed by Kant, which makes the general validity of one’s own action standards (maxims) the criterion for morally justified actions. It rejects cultural relativism. • Fourth, it is interested in the nonviolent solution of conflicts. A dialectical ethic does not content itself with the definition of action norms and goals. It thematizes mediation as the appropriate method to achieve reasonable goals. While it is the task of theoretical reason to recognize reality and that of practical reason to name generally binding action norms, it is the task of dialectical reason to mediate between the two. Conflicts to be mediated arise in four areas: It is 1) the work-determined confrontation of man with the natural environment, which serves his self-preservation and -development. It is the necessary metabolism process that man has to perform permanently because of his natural conditions as a living being. Due to the dominant technology, a new ethical goal, a life-preserving ecological technology, enters this process, which mediates the claims of man and nature (Jonas). It is 2) the problematic relationship of man to himself, his feelings, his contradictory inclinations and drives. Of elementary importance is his natural need for happiness (cf. Plato, Stoics, Freud). It is 3) the relationship to the moral and cultural demands of society to which man is exposed due to his ‘unsociable socializing’. These include the areas of politics (Arendt),economics (Weber), law, especially international law (Kant), and pedagogy (Rousseau, Humboldt and other.). The last area 4) has a fundamental importance. It includes the theoretical, practical and aesthetic world orientation, i.e. art, religion, science, philosophy, and the various concepts of ethics. It is formed in dialogue and has an influence on the other three. For the self-proclaimed identity of the person, the task of testing and mediating in relation to the four aforementioned areas arises. Identity as a goal of mediation only makes sense in everyday life practice (cf. Mead 1975; Erikson 2015, Taylor 1996). From this follows the following scheme for a dialectical ethics:

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World orientation (theoretical, practical, aesthetic)

Demands of the society (legal, political, moral)

Testing and mediation

Testing and mediation

I-identity of the person

Testing and mediation

Challenges of the natural environment

Testing and mediation Feelings (Natural need for happiness)

2 Freedom and Equality—On the Prehistory of the Declaration of Human Rights The self-proclaimed identity of the person can only be achieved if freedom and equality are granted to all other people, i.e. under the condition of recognized human rights. We associate three basic ideas with the declaration of human rights: Firstly, it is the equality of rights based on the common nature of all human beings, secondly, the guarantee of the use of individual freedom, which can only be restricted if it harms others, and thirdly, the commandment of a peaceful, community-serving coexistence. The idea of natural equality is first clearly expressed by the Sophist Hippias of Elis who lived in the 5th century BC and argued that “we are all—not by descent, but by nature—related and fellow countrymen and fellow citizens. […] But descent, this tyrant of people, forces much against nature” (Capelle 1968, 370). In a similar way, his contemporary Antiphon, who lived in Athens, emphasized that discrimination against “barbarians” could not be justified because “by nature we are created equal in all respects, barbarians as well as Greeks” (DK 87, B 44). This statement clearly contradicts the widely held attitude of the Greeks towards the barbarians, i.e. all foreign, non-Greek-speaking peoples with whom they waged wars and who they used as slaves in agriculture, in mines and in households. The denial of

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equality went hand in hand with the denial of freedom. With slavery, the Greeks and Romans “created something new and quite their own in world history”, namely “an institutionalized system that used slave labor to a large extent both in rural and urban areas” (Finley 1987, 79). All considerations of Greek and Roman authors who problematize slavery and tend to speak out in favor of the idea of human rights cannot disguise the historically stable existence of slavery in antiquity (cf. Herrmann-Otto 2013, 7). Even for Plato, the existence of slaves is a matter of course, even though he does not question their humanity or their intellectual abilities. In his dialogue Menon (82 b) he explains his thesis that all learning is memory by having a young slave solve the difficult geometric task of doubling a square (cf. Wimmer 1979, 29; Erler 2007, 170). More important for the development of law, and thus implicitly for the idea of human rights, is his sharp criticism of tyranny and his design of a state that is based on reason and the principles of justice. In his Politeia he turns to the Sophist Thrasymachus against the widespread and universally accepted view that it is just what “benefits friends but harms enemies” (334b). Rather, he represents the not only astonishing thesis for his time that it is unjust and unwise to “harm any human being” (335 b). The task of the state is the common good. Aristotle further develops Plato’s concept of a just state in his Politics. For him, the state is not a divine institution. Its origin lies in the nature of man; for man is by nature not only a linguistically gifted, reasonable living being, a “zoon logon echon”, but also a ‘state-forming’ living being, a “zoon politikon”. However, the specific form of political coexistence is not predetermined for man, as opposed to animals. Rather, he must, with the help of language, reach an understanding with his fellow citizens about “what is useful and harmful” and also about “what is just and unjust”. He emphasizes: “The community in these things creates the household and the state” (1253 a). As with Plato, this is a rule of law state. However, it is self-evident for Aristotle that the regulation of political “things” is a matter for “free and equal” citizens, and this does not include women and children, nor foreigners and slaves. Aristotle is one of the few authors of his time who actually dealt with the question of the justification of slavery (cf. Wimmer 1979, 31-35). He says that there are two opposite opinions on this question: According to one, the “master-servant relationship”, i.e. slavery, is a practical necessity and as such part of the science of state. “Others claim that the master-servant relationship is against nature; only by convention is one a slave, the other a free man, but by nature there is no difference. Therefore, it is not just, but violent” (1254 a). The solution to this problem, in his opinion, is that, just as the

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reasonable soul should rule the body in man, there are people who, due to their more developed reason, are more suited to command and others who are more suited to serve. For these it is “better to be ruled in the corresponding way” (1254 b). However, it may happen that someone who is not a slave by nature is made a slave by the victor in an unjust war. But whoever “falls into slavery without deserving it, cannot be called a slave in any way” (1255 a). With the death of Alexander the Great in the year 323 BC the loss of Greece’s supremacy in the Mediterranean went hand in hand, and Rome now developed into the new political center. This was the time of the development of the philosophy of Hellenism, to which Stoicism also belonged. The idea of humanity played a decisive role in it. For Cicero (106 BC—43 BC), who is close to Stoicism (see Section IV, 1), it is the task assigned to man by nature to take into account the “all-embracing community of mankind” in his actions. This includes practicing helpfulness, generosity, kindness and justice, not only towards fellow citizens, but also towards strangers. He emphasizes the virtue of humanitas, i.e. humanity. Although he does not yet demand the abolition of slavery, he does demand a humane treatment of slaves and their just compensation. In the years 73 to 71 BC, the slave Spartacus, who had escaped with a group of fellow prisoners, undertook a military uprising against the slavery prevailing in the Roman Empire. Despite some considerable successes against the regular troops of Rome, his uprising was eventually crushed (cf. Wimmer 1979, 62; Herrmann-Otto 2013, 132f.). The fight for the freedom and equality of mankind remained a topic for intellectuals for the time being. Also Seneca (4 BC—65 AD) points to the common nature of all human beings, which “has created us as relatives”. “It has implanted mutual love in us and made us social beings. It has introduced justice and fairness. According to her command, our hands should be ready to help those in need. […] We are born into community. Our social belonging has a great similarity to an arch, which would collapse if the stones were not prevented from doing so by their mutual position and thus made the building durable” (Seneca 2004 Vol. IV, 164). Into this solidary community he also includes the slaves. He does not demand the abolition of slavery any more than Cicero does, but he does demand the treatment of the slave in the spirit of humanity, i.e.: “Live with your subordinate as you wish your superior to live with you” (ibid., Vol. III, 159). In view of the fate that can befall anyone, the difference between freeman and slave is anyway without significance

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and every other human being is to some extent a “fellow slave” (ibid., 154). Seneca has made an important contribution to human rights. Marc Aurel (121 AD – 180 AD) gives the idea of the common nature of all humans a new twist. He considers nature as a cosmos and compares this to a state. In this way, man becomes a cosmopolitan. “If that is the case, then we humans are citizens. But then we have a share in some kind of constitution together. So the cosmos is, so to speak, a state. Because on what other common constitution should the entire human race have a share?” (Marc Aurel 1973, 34). With this thought of the interpretation of nature as a state, Marc Aurel associates the perspective for human action. Required is an action in which the natural and the political correspond. This means: “Man should direct all his ‘striving for the common good’” (ibid., 139). While Marc Aurel, as a Roman emperor, was critical of Christianity, nothing changed in the attitude towards slavery at the time of Emperor Theodosius (379–395), when Christianity was raised to the state religion in the Roman Empire. It was generally referred to a passage by Paul, a contemporary of Seneca, who, in contrast to Stoicism, no longer considered man as a creature of nature, but as a creature of God. Although all men are equal before God, this does not change their position to each other. Rather, Paul emphasizes in his first letter to the Corinthians: “Let each one remain in the calling in which he was called. If you were called as a slave, do not worry about it; […]. Let each one, brothers, remain in the calling in which he was called before God” (1 Cor. 7, V. 20, 24). This means: “The claim of freedom among men does not arise from freedom before God” (Wimmer 1979, 67). This meant that slavery, which was called serfdom in the Middle Ages, was theologically sanctioned (cf. ibid.; Blickle 2006). The Magna Charta Libertatum proclaimed by “Johan”, by the grace of “God King of England” from the year 1215 therefore explicitly only referred to the situation of the free. They were to be guaranteed legal certainty. They should also be protected from arbitrary arrest and imprisonment at the same time. In this sense, Article 39 provides: “No free man shall be seized, imprisoned, deprived of his property, banished or in any way destroyed, nor will we proceed against him or pursue him, except in accordance with the lawful judgment of his peers and according to the law of the land” (Heidelmeyer 1997, 52). In the Renaissance and Humanism, the idea of freedom gained increased attention. Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494) considered freedom to be a gift from God. In his writing On the Dignity of Man, he put the following speech in the mouth of man: “The nature of the other creatures is determined by the laws prescribed by us and thereby kept within bounds. You are not hindered by any insurmountable bounds, but according to your own

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free will, in whose hand I have placed your destiny, you should even determine that nature for yourself ” (Pico della Mirandola o. J., 10). Also Erasmus von Rotterdam (1466/1469-1536) emphasizes human freedom. He understands “the free will as a power of human willing” (Erasmus 1995, Vol. 4, 37). In contrast, polemizes Luther (1483-1546). He emphasizes that “the free will is a pure lie” (Luther 1961, 154). This thesis also has political consequences. The subject is obliged to obedience to the authorities. To justify this, he quotes Paul as follows: “The authority is ordained by God” (Luther Vol. 4, 29; cf. Romans 13:1). Luther decisively rejects the demand of the serfs raised in the Peasants’ War in 1525: “We want to be free” (Blickle 2003, 90). Abolition of serfdom is not a consequence of Christian freedom for him, but a “work of the devil” (ibid., 95). In a scandalous way, this means “making Christian freedom quite fleshly” (ibid., 95). The freedom rediscovered in the Renaissance and Humanism and the impulse associated with it for human rights were lost in the religious wars of the 17th century. The Thirty Years’ War is the most shocking example of this. But it is perhaps precisely this relapse into barbarism that helped the principles of tolerance, enlightenment, reason and freedom to prevail in the 18th century. One of the pioneers of these principles was already at the end of the 17th century John Locke (1632-1704), who in his political writings determined the “state of nature” of man as a “state of perfect freedom ” and as a “state of equality” (Locke 1977, 201), which of course excluded any form of “slavery” (ibid., 214). This new way of thinking found its first expression in the preamble of the American Declaration of Independence of July 4, 1776, which was largely formulated by Thomas Jefferson – and inspired by John Locke – in which freedom and equality of all people were postulated with the following words: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness” (Mann/Nitschke 1991, Vol. 7, 538). This early formulation of human rights is significant because it not only includes the claim to freedom and equality of all people within the given state, but also explicitly emphasizes the democratic legitimacy of the

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government and, moreover, asserts a right of resistance against a government that disregards the fundamental rights of its citizens, even though it is then clearly pointed out that the overthrow of the government must remain the very last step and that minor offenses of the government must be accepted. In contradiction to the human rights commitment expressed in the preamble, the economic success of the United States of America was largely based on the work of slaves who were brought from Africa to the new world and sold by slave traders. In particular, the large plantations of the southern states had a great need (cf. Wimmer 1979, 149-169). Thomas Jefferson, the third President of the USA, also employed, like his predecessors and successors, including, for example, George Washington, a large number of slaves. The ideology of most slaveholders was that they saw the blacks as inferior and racially inferior. As late as 1710, Judge John Saffin from Massachusetts held the view that “God […] has set different grades and classes of people, some to be eminent and respected, some to be despicable and low […] some to be born as slaves and to remain slaves for the rest of their lives, as it has been proven. Otherwise, equality among people would simply prevail” (Wimmer 1979, 162). However, Jefferson was aware of the contradiction to the wording of the preamble, but justified the retention of slavery with his fear of the possible revenge of the freed slaves on their former oppressors (cf. Bielefeldt 1998, 81). Not until 1865 was slavery prohibited as a result of the American Civil War, with the significant involvement of Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) and this ban was legitimized by an amendment to the Constitution. In Germany, the idea of human rights is primarily associated with Kant and the principle of enlightenment that he advocated. The concept of person is at the center of his considerations and has a central importance for his ethics by demanding that “the humanity in the person” must never be merely a means, but always also be respected as an end in itself (see section IV, 2). This means: “Only the human being as person, i.e. as subject of a moral-practical reason […] has a dignity (an absolute inner value), by which he requires all other rational beings in the world to respect him, to measure themselves against each other and to value each other on an equal footing” (Kant 1998, IV, 569). Freedom, equality and the dignity of the person form for Kant the basis of universal human rights. The “human right” is something for him that “by reason immediately requires respect ” (Kant 1998, VI, 164). This must be defended within a state against the ruler. Kant criticizes the rule of whim in the age of absolutism with the following words: “For the omnipotence of nature […] the human being is again only a trifle. But that the rulers

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of his own kind take him for it and treat him as such, partly loading him down like an animal, as a mere tool of their intentions, partly setting him up in their disputes with each other in order to have him slaughtered—that is no trifle, but inversion of the purpose of creation itself ” (ibid., 362). The “disputes” of the rulers, i.e. the wars, therefore represent for Kant the main problem of the violation of human rights.” Kant saw despotic government as a major cause of wars, because where the head of state is not a “citizen of the state” but a “state owner”, it is the “most unthinking thing in the world for him […] at his tables, hunts, pleasure palaces, court festivals” to decide on wars, as if these were “a kind of pleasure trip” (ibid., 206). The end of wars is only to be expected when the “consent of the citizens” (ibid., 205) is required in a state with a republican constitution. Because they would never begin a war in view of the “costs” and the “destruction” that a war entails. Kant went one step further with his considerations for achieving a state of peace. In his work Zum ewigen Frieden from the year 1795 he developed a plan for a world peace order. His most important demands are: “Standing armies (miles perpetuus) are to cease altogether over time” (ibid., 197) and: “No state shall violently interfere in the constitution and government of another state” (ibid., 199). Kant linked his hope for a worldwide peace with a “League of Nations.” The “international law” he represented was to be founded “on a federation of free states” (ibid., 208). The chances for the realization of this plan he saw firstly in the self-preservation instinct of man, secondly in the spread of the republican constitution and finally thirdly in the “spirit of commerce, which cannot coexist with war” (ibid., 226). As a result of this, Kant’s plan presents itself as a “founded hope.” It is “not an empty idea,” but a “task that, gradually dissolved, comes closer and closer to its goal […] steadily” (ibid., 251). With his considerations on international law and the peace order based on it, Kant has enriched the idea of universal human rights by an essential aspect.

3 The Declaration of Human Rights (1789/1948)—An Unfinished Project In the course of the Enlightenment in the 18th century, French thinkers increasingly criticized the absolutist state. Among the most historically powerful was Montesquieu (1689-1755). In his work On the Spirit of the Laws from the year 1748 he not only made the important distinction between

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natural law, i.e. the “laws of nature,” and the “positive laws,” but developed, in continuation of thoughts by Locke, the principle of separation of powers further. He distinguishes three: the “legislative authority,” the “executive authority” and the “judicial authority” (Montesquieu 1965, 212f.). This distinction is made in the interest of freedom. His justification is: “As soon as the legislative authority is combined with the executive in the same person or the same officials, there is no freedom. For it would be feared that the same monarch or the same senate would enact tyrannical laws and then carry them out tyrannically” (ibid.). The same would apply if the judicial power were not separated from the other two. As an institution that enacts and also applies laws, the judge would have the “coercive power of an oppressor” (ibid., 213). For Rousseau too, the interest in freedom is the decisive motive for dealing with the question of a state form justified by natural law. In his work Du Contrat Social Ou Principes Du Droit Politique (The Social Contract) published in 1762, he takes a clear position against any form of slavery. In contrast to Aristotle’s thesis that there are slaves by nature, he says: “Every person born into slavery is born for slavery; nothing is more certain. The slaves lose everything in their shackles, even the desire to throw them off, they love their servitude […]. If there are slaves by nature, then the reason is that there have been slaves against nature before. Violence made the first slaves; their cowardice has kept them constant” (Rousseau 1974, 8). The principle of freedom motivates the leading question of the social contract designed by him. It reads: “’How can one find a social form that, with the entire joint strength, defends and protects the person and the property of each member of society, and by virtue of which each individual, although united with all, nevertheless only obeys himself and remains as free as before?’ (Ibid., 17). The freedom of the citizen and not the servitude of the slave, the serf, the subject, is to be the common bond that binds the members of a state. This is the revolutionary message that Rousseau conveyed to his countrymen in the time of the crisis of absolutism and which was to develop its explosive power a little later (cf. Fetscher 1975). With the storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789, the French Revolution reached its first high point. In the course of these events, the National Assembly was formed from the original Estates-General. One of the main goals was to give the state a generally binding, new legal basis. It should, like the American Declaration of Independence, guarantee everyone and every citizen a security that would protect him from arbitrary interference by the state, but at the same time make the orientation towards the common good clear. After a series of drafts and fierce debates, the

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Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen was adopted on August 27, 1789. The king finally accepted it on October 5 after some hesitation. The Declaration was finally placed in front of the Constitution of 1791 (cf. Heidelmeyer 1997, 17). The preamble begins with the following words: “The representatives of the French people, constituted as a National Assembly, considering that the ignorance, the forgetfulness or the contempt of the rights of man are the only causes of public misfortune and of the corruption of governments, have resolved to set forth in a solemn declaration the natural, inalienable and sacred rights of man” (ibid., 56f.). They include the triad of freedom, equality and the common good, which are mentioned in the first article. It reads: “People are born free and equal in rights and remain so. Social differences can only be based on the common good” (Ibid., 57). The second article deals with the role of the state in guaranteeing human rights, which encompass more than freedom and equality. It reads: “The goal of every political association is the preservation of the natural and inalienable human rights. These rights are freedom, property, security and resistance to oppression” (ibid.). The third article also deals with the state. In it, the revolutionary approach is expressed in that the principle of popular sovereignty takes the place of absolutist rule. That is to say: “The origin of all sovereignty lies essentially in the people […]” (ibid.). It is not until the fourth article that the individual rights of the citizen are again emphasized. It reads: “Freedom consists in being able to do everything that does not harm another: thus the exercise of the natural rights of each man has no limits other than those which assure to the other members of society the enjoyment of the same rights. These limits can only be determined by the law” (ibid.). From this follows in the fifth article the remarkable reversal of a right that is based on privileges, i.e. that a specific permission must be granted for actions. Now it says: “Everything that is not forbidden by law cannot be prevented” (ibid.). In the sixth article, an idea is expressed that played a central, if difficult to assess, role in Rousseau’s “Social Contract”, that of the “general will” (volonté générale). Now it only comprises the right of every citizen to access public offices. It reads: “The law is the expression of the general will. All citizens are entitled to participate in its formation personally or through their representatives. It should be the same for everyone, whether it protects or punishes. Since all citizens are equal in its eyes, they can equally be admitted to all offices, positions and public offices, according to their ability and without any other distinction than that of their virtues and their talents” (ibid., 57f.).

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Articles 7 to 9 deal with criminal law. It is emphasized that no accusation or arrest may be made without a legal basis legitimized by law, that the penalties imposed shall be proportionate and that the corresponding law must have been enacted “before the commission of the crime”, i.e. that the principle “nulla poena sine lege” shall apply. In addition, the presumption of innocence applies to every accused person, i.e. every human being is “innocent as long as he is not declared guilty” (ibid., 58). The two following articles contain freedom of religion and freedom of opinion. Article 10 reads: “No one shall be disturbed on account of his views, even religious ones, provided that their expression does not disturb the public order established by law” (ibid.). This is paralleled by Article 11: “The free communication of thoughts and opinions is one of the most precious rights of man; every citizen can therefore freely speak, write, print, subject to the responsibility for the abuse of this freedom in certain cases specified by law” (ibid.). In both articles, which have since become the core of every declaration of human rights, an individual right is granted, but at the same time it is restricted in that it may not violate the public order. However, this framework is to be set by the state and can therefore be narrower or wider. Articles 12 to 15 deal with the role of the state as an ordering power and tax law. Taxes are to be distributed “equally to all citizens according to their ability to pay” (ibid.). Their use should be able to be publicly monitored by the citizens. In addition, society is entitled to “require accountability from every public official for his conduct in office” (ibid.). Article 16 declares the principle of separation of powers developed by Montesquieu to be the criterion of a rule of law and thus a human right. It reads: “Every society in which the guarantee of rights is not assured or the separation of powers is not established has no constitution” (ibid., 59). The 17th article, which concludes the declaration, once again clearly shows the way in which the freedom right is linked to the property right. But even that is not absolute. State expropriation is allowed under certain conditions. This means: “Property as an inviolable and sacred right may not be taken from anyone, unless a public, legally established necessity clearly requires it, and under the condition of a just and prior compensation” (ibid.). It was the French Revolutionaries themselves who quickly turned away from the ideals of the Declaration of Human Rights in their political practice. Robespierre, one of their most prominent leaders, not only pursued the execution of Louis XVI., but also had many other political opponents executed during his reign of terror (terreur), including Danton.

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Nor did Kant’s expectation of a world order of peace come true, despite an increasing economic interweaving of the countries of Europe. Wars continued to determine history, including the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/1871 and the First World War of 1914-1918, which was hardly surpassed in cruelty, before the League of Nations, based on Kant’s considerations and as an attempt to avoid wars in the future, was founded in Geneva in 1920. Germany was admitted in 1926 and the Soviet Union in 1934. But as early as 1933, Germany and Japan left the League, and Italy in 1937. The Soviet Union was excluded in 1940. The Second World War had already begun and the League of Nations had failed in its fundamental goal. After the UN had been founded in 1945, the League of Nations was dissolved on April 18, 1946. The UN took its place. On December 10, 1948, the General Assembly of the UN adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). None of the nations participating in the vote in the General Assembly voted against the Declaration. Only the countries of the Eastern Bloc, as well as South Africa and Saudi Arabia, abstained from voting (see Heidelmeyer 1997, 33). The Declaration includes a preamble and thirty articles. With an indirect reference to the serious human rights violations during the Second World War, the basic intentions of the Declaration are formulated in the preamble. It begins as follows: ”As recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world, as disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people, as it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law, as it is essential to promote the development of friendly relations between nations, as the peoples of the United Nations have in the Charter reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women and have determined to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,

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as Member States have pledged themselves to achieve, in co-operation with the United Nations, the promotion of universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms, as a common understanding of these rights and freedoms is of the greatest importance for the full realization of this pledge, now, therefore, the General Assembly proclaims this Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction.” (Heidelmeyer 1997, 209-214). The human rights listed in the Declaration are referred to as an “ideal”, and indeed, in contrast to the laws of a state, i.e. positive law, they have no binding force, but the character of a moral-practical recommendation. In this respect, they resemble ethical statements. For this reason, it is also justified to discuss the Declaration of Human Rights in the context of a presentation of ethical concepts. Central formulations of human rights can also be interpreted as ethical statements. This not only applies to the call for peaceful coexistence of nations, but also, for example, to the expressly highlighted “equality of men and women”. Although the introduction of women’s suffrage in the 20th century was a first important step in this direction in many states, it has not yet been achieved in many states. Another point is the demand for the rule of law formulated in every political ethics and the right of resistance “against tyranny and oppression” mentioned as a last resort. The reference to “freedom of speech and religion” and the special importance of “human dignity” are also of ethical significance. Finally, the preamble calls for “promoting respect for these rights and freedoms by education and training and by progressive measures at the national and international levels to ensure their general and effective recognition and implementation […]”. Article 1 is based on the tradition of the idea of human rights, which goes back to the Stoics: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood”. Article 2 points out that no “distinction shall be made on the basis of such factors as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other

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opinion, national or social origin”. Articles 3 to 6 form the centre of individual rights. They read: 3. “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person”. 4. “No one shall be held in slavery or servitude, slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms”. 5. “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”. 6. “Everyone has the right to recognition as a person before the law”. Articles 7 to 11 deal with criminal law. Article 7 emphasizes the equality of all people before the law, Article 8 an “effective legal protection” of every person “against all acts” which violate his “fundamental rights”, Article 9 prohibits arbitrary arrest and expulsion, Article 10 requires for every accused person a “public trial before an independent and impartial court” and Article 11 declares that every person is to be considered innocent until his guilt is proven and he may only be punished according to the laws which existed at the time of the deed (nulla poena sine lege). Article 12 guarantees the protection of the person against “arbitrary interference with his private life”, e.g. “his correspondence”, Article 13 the right of every person to freedom of movement within his country and the right to “leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country”. Article 14 contains the right to “seek and enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution” unless he is accused of “non-political crimes”. Article 15 provides: “(1) Every person has the right to a nationality. (2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality […].” Article 16 guarantees to men and women of marriageable age the right to marry and provides inter alia: “Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses”. Furthermore, it is emphasized that the family as the “natural and fundamental unit of society” has a “claim to protection by society and the State”. Article 17 contains the right to property. Article 18 deals with the “freedom of thought, conscience and religion”, which also includes the right to change religion and the right to private or public exercise of religious rites. Article 19 states: “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers”. Article 20 guarantees the “freedom of assembly and association for peaceful purposes”.

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Article 21 guarantees the right to political participation and the democratic principle. It states: “The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of public power; this will must be expressed through periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret ballot or by equivalent free voting procedures”. Article 22 guarantees to everyone the “right to social security” and Article 23 the “right to work“, the right to “equal pay for equal work” and a wage which ensures existence as well as the right to form trade unions. In addition, Article 24 provides the right to “periodic, paid holidays“. Article 25 contains the social state principle. It reads: “(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and wellbeing of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control. (2) Mother and child have the right to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.” It is followed by Article 26, which includes the right to education. Among other things, it says: “(1) Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free at least in elementary and fundamental schools. Elementary education is compulsory. […] (2) Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace. (3) Parents have the right to choose the type of education their children will receive.” Article 27 includes the right to participate in cultural life and the protection of the author’s rights in his artistic, literary and scientific productions. Article 28 formulates the claim to a social and international order corresponding to the human rights. Article 29, inter alia, provides: “Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible.“ The final article 30 provides that the Declaration may not be construed as implying the “destruction” of the freedoms and rights mentioned. As convincing as the articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights may be, they have occasionally been criticized even by their most fundamental supporters. Their criticism was mainly directed at the fact that it only expressed an “ideal” that was far removed from reality. As early as 1958, the then Federal President of the Federal Republic of Germany Theodor Heuss formulated this criticism as follows:” ‘Only a dreamer or an

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illusionist will consider the sentences of that declaration to be a reflection of reality, they are wishful thinking, which the ironist shrugs off, which is ridiculed by the skeptic. Its meaning is quite simple: They are to be understood as a commission and appreciated as a measure for the position of man in society, be it called society, people, state’” (Hartung et al. 1998, 35f.). The criticism of the only ideal character of the declared human rights is only partly correct, because it does not take into account its potential for historical effect. Thus, individual formulations of the rights have been incorporated into the constitutions of the countries, for example in that of the Federal Republic of Germany, and have acquired the character of a positive right there, that is, they are enforceable. In a similar way, the effort to give human rights greater binding force is to be found in the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms adopted by the Council of Europe on 4 November 1950. Not only did the German Bundestag agree to it, but “it proclaimed it with legal force on 7 August 1952” (Hartung et al. 1998, 161). Another form of criticism was directed against the universal claim of human rights. It is pointed out that the declarations of human rights have developed in European history and that only “Western values” are expressed in them (cf. Bielefeldt 1998, 115). In other historical and cultural contexts there are quite different legal views. It is therefore an expression of an impermissible claim to power to claim universality for the declarations of human rights that have arisen in the European tradition. Two versions of this form of criticism are mentioned, both of which concern central questions of the declarations of human rights. The first relates to the history and culture of Asia. It is criticized that the individual is at the center of the Europeandetermined human rights, while it is important to recognize “a community that goes beyond the individual” (cf. ibid., 152). However, the accusation of individualism is incorrect. Although individual rights play a great role in the declarations, they also always emphasize the consideration of the common good. The UN Declaration emphasizes the encounter of people “in the spirit of brotherhood” already in the first article, the duties of the individual towards the state in Article 29 and the commandment of a peaceful coexistence in the national and international context in Article 26. This expresses the insight that the “human being and citizen” can only gain his individual rights in a state of law that protects the common good. The second version criticizes the lack of religious justification for the modern concept of human rights (cf. Bielefeldt 1998, 135 ff.), partly with a clear criticism of the claim of reason (cf. Pannenberg 1996, 105; Küng 2011, 75). The reference is correct: The French Declaration of Human

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Rights is based on the “natural, inalienable” human rights and thus on natural law. The basic idea of natural law is that all human beings are “equal by nature“, endowed with the same rights and abilities, above all those of freedom and reason. However, it should be noted that the term “nature” is used in the sense of essence and not in the sense of a natural causal relationship; because it is precisely part of the “nature” of man that he exceeds this relationship due to his freedom. This also means: Man is by “nature” a rational being. Natural law has been a rational law since Kant at the latest. The UN Declaration, in a further development of this concept, is based on an “ideal” to be achieved in the future. The basis of universal human rights is freedom, equality and reason of all human beings. Both declarations do not rely on a religious justification. Religions have a legitimate place within general, reason-oriented human rights, but cannot provide a universally binding basis for universal human rights due to their respective specific dogmas. The basis of not only ethics, but also of universal human rights, is dialogical reason. The dispute between religions, world views and ideologies carried out in words cannot do without the recourse to dialogical reason. However, with the recognition of the right of every human being to a free and equal use of language, the dispute about binding forms of coexistence is not yet settled, but the prospect of a non-violent solution is opened up. The search for binding formulations of human rights is an essential part of this. It is the central theme of a discourse ethics (cf. Section XI, 3). Human rights are therefore an unfinished project in three respects: Firstly, they are still grossly violated in many countries today. First and foremost is the violation of the commandment of peaceful coexistence of peoples. The countless wars since the UN Declaration of 1948 bear witness to this as much as the “reversion to the Cold War” (Scholl-Latour 2014, 21) which, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, was supposed to be over. Human rights organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch regularly point to other violations of human rights in their annual reports. These include the violation of numerous guaranteed rights: the prohibition of torture; the equality of all human beings, regardless of race or gender; freedom of opinion and the press; freedom of religion, including its change; freedom of assembly; the right to free and secret elections; the right to social security, the right to education, etc. The project of human rights is unfinished in a second respect as well. In the decades since the UN Declaration of Human Rights, expanded and more specific demands for the rights of human beings and citizens have been made of the international community of states, for example, by John Rawls (1921-2002) and Martha Nussbaum (born 1947). For them, human

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rights form the basis of their considerations of a political ethic. In his work A Theory of Justice (1971), Rawls asks: How must a society be constituted so that elementary human rights are guaranteed for every individual human being? His answer is: It must be just. He justifies his thesis as follows: “Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, just as truth is the criterion of thought systems” (Rawls 1979, 19). In doing so, he interprets “justice as fairness” (ibid.). He is guided by the following thought: “Every human being has an inviolability arising from justice that even in the name of the well-being of the whole society cannot be abrogated. Therefore, justice does not allow the loss of freedom to be compensated for by a greater good for others. It does not allow sacrifices that are imposed on a few to be outweighed by the greater advantage of many others. Therefore, in a just society, equal civil rights are assumed for everyone; the rights based on justice are not the subject of political negotiations or social interest balancing” (ibid., 19f.). Rawls orientates himself with these considerations on a principle-based ethic of Kantian origin, and at the same time contradicts the prevailing political utilitarianism of his time. Human and civil rights apply without exception to everyone. They are universal. Any society that claims to be just must meet this criterion. He relies on the “well-known theory of the social contract by Locke, Rousseau and Kant” (ibid., 27) to develop these criteria. He makes it clear that the concept of such a contract cannot be based on a return to a historical state of affairs. Rather, it is a thought experiment and the development of principles with which existing societies can be judged. “These are the principles that free and reasonable people would accept in an initial situation of equality in order to determine the basic conditions of their association in their own interest” (ibid., 28). But how can it be prevented that the participants in the process do not try to assert their own advantage over all others? The answer is: “One of the essential features of this situation is that nobody knows his position in society, his class or his status, no more than his share in the distribution of natural gifts such as intelligence or physical strength. […]. The principles of justice are established behind a veil of ignorance” (ibid., 29). This veil corresponds to the blindfold with which Iustitia, the goddess of justice, passes her judgments without regard to the person. Entmythologized this means: Only the one who acts impartially and thus justly, takes into account the interests of the worst-off as well as the better-off. Rawls political ethics defends the concept of a liberal democracy that, like the declaration of human rights, claims universal validity. In political terms, his central concern is the freedom of every human being as a civil right.

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In economic terms, he does not advocate the distribution of social wealth, but he does guarantee “fair equality of opportunity” to everyone, even the socially disadvantaged, to be able to take up any social position and participate in the wealth of society. Under this condition, Rawls formulates two principles of a just society: “First principle Everyone has the same right to the most comprehensive system of equal basic freedoms that is possible for everyone.” Second principle Social and economic inequalities must be as follows: (a) they must, subject to the just savings principle, bring the greatest possible benefit to the least favored, and (b) they must be associated with offices and positions that are open to all according to fair equality of opportunity” (ibid., 336). Martha Nussbaum also develops her political ethics on the basis of human rights. She also claims universality for her ethical principles, because they have an anthropological basis and that is the same for all people. Cultural differences are only phenomenal variations of a nature that is the same for all people. This can be recognized when people who live in different contexts are “made familiar with a catalog of possibilities and invited to a dialogue” (Nussbaum 2018, 76). Only by “dialogue” and “a strong intervention by the political side” (ibid., 78) can, for example, the equality of women, which is still not achieved in many states and “in developing countries is one of the most pressing and controversial issues” (ibid., 76), be enforced. The ten characteristics of human nature are: 1) the “mortality”, 2) the “human body”, 3) the “ability to experience joy and pain”, 4) “cognitive abilities: perception, imagination, thinking”, 5) “early childhood development”, 6) “practical reason”, 7) the “connectedness with other species and with nature”, 8) “humor and play”, 9) the “separation” from other people in the sense of the individuality of each person and finally 10) (as its own feature) “strong separation” in the sense of individual property (cf. ibid., 49-55). They all make up the “nature of man”. From it, the rights and needs of man can be derived, which must be respected not only by every state, but by the international community of states. This results in a catalog of demands that every person can make against a state to which “the well-being of people” is important. An orientation is offered by the model of “social democracy” prevailing in the Scandinavian countries (cf. ibid., 80 ff.). This means, among other things, that the principle of distributive justice is applied in the event of a strong inequality of wealth. Nussbaum also picks up considerations by Aristotle and Marx,

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because “the thesis advocated by Aristotle and picked up and further developed by Marx is undoubtedly plausible: that the forces of practical reason need institutional and material conditions for their development, which are not always available” (ibid., 61). However, the main emphasis is on Aristotle, whom she quotes as follows: “‘No citizen shall be in want of subsistence’” (ibid., 24; cf. Aristotle Politics 1330a). Therefore, she calls her concept an ‘Aristotelian social democracy’ (cf. Nussbaum 2018, 24). The goal is that, with state aid, and this also includes material aid, every person is enabled to lead a good life according to his or her abilities (capabilities) (cf. ibid., 57 f.). In order to achieve this, the following requirements are indispensable: “What is required is a comprehensive health system, clean air and water, security for life and property, and the protection of the freedom of citizens to make important decisions about their medical treatment. What is required is adequate nutrition and housing, and these things must be designed so that citizens can regulate their nutrition and housing according to their own practical reason. […] What would be required is protection against physical attacks and other avoidable pain. For the senses, the imagination and the mind, many forms of education and training would be required beyond medical care, which aim to promote these abilities, as well as the protection of the arts as an essential prerequisite for the development of imagination and feelings, and as a source of enjoyment. For practical reasons, institutions would be required that promote a humanistic form of education, and the freedom of citizens must be guaranteed in all areas, including the development of political concepts themselves” (ibid., 65). While Rawls tries to concretize human rights at the state level in the sense of a liberal democracy, Nussbaum is oriented towards the Scandinavian model of social democracy. Nevertheless, both concepts, albeit with different accentuations, emphasize the connection of political freedoms contained in the Declaration of Human Rights, such as Article 21, with social and economic guarantees, for example the social state principle expressed in Article 25. The project of the UN Declaration of Human Rights is still unfinished in a third respect. All previously formulated human rights represent, in addition to the utopia contained in them, also an attempt at a universally valid answer to a specific historical problem. This was in the American Declaration of Independence the separation of the American colonies from the motherland, in the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen the overcoming of absolutism by a bourgeois state based on the separation of powers, and in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the UNO the answer of the international community of states to the acts of

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“barbarism” of the Nazi dictatorship and the atrocities of war (cf. Hartung et al. 1998, 34f.). In the present, the age of technology, there are new challenges to which a universally valid declaration of human rights must find an answer. They concern the entire human race. As early as 1972, the “Club of Rome” had pointed out in its “Report on the State of Mankind” entitled The Limits of Growth five globally occurring threatening trends. He came to the conclusion: “If the present increase in world population, industrialization, environmental pollution, food production and exploitation of natural resources continues unchanged, the absolute growth limits on earth will be reached within the next hundred years” (Meadows et al. 1974, 17). If these limits are exceeded, a humanitarian catastrophe will occur, i.e. “a rather rapid and unstoppable decline in population” (ibid.). Even then, the scientists involved saw the only chance for humanity in a radical change of thinking. They were to abandon the uncritical belief in unlimited growth. Rather, it was about “initiating the transition from growth to balance”. In 1972 they still had the following hope: “It appears possible to change the growth trends and to achieve an ecological and economic balance state that can be maintained also in the future. It could be achieved in such a way that the material living conditions for every human being on earth are guaranteed and still room is left to use individual human abilities and to achieve personal goals” (ibid.). This description of a possible world society combines the fulfillment of reasonable demands of ecology and economy with the project of human rights. It represents in a convincing way the utopia of a good life. This goal is more topical than ever. However, the radical change of thinking did not take place (cf. Meadows 2016). On the contrary, the mentioned trends have intensified since the 1970s. There is still a strong population growth, a progressive industrialization and an associated environmental pollution, a threatening destruction of the forest by slash-and-burn and deforestation, a rapid extinction of species and an increasingly visible climate change. The ecological crisis has assumed such dimensions that the biosphere is now seriously endangered. It is about nothing less than the further habitability of the earth for future generations. Independently of this, the human rights are now threatened in another way, almost unnoticed by society. It is about the ever more concrete possibilities for a “genetic enhancement” (cf. Bohlken/Thies 2009, 108), which makes the human being the subject of technical manipulation for the purpose of “improvement” of his biological structure. At stake is the central question of the integrity of the human being as a person (cf. section X, 3).

XII Ethics and Universal Human Rights     337

The requirements for an extended declaration of human rights are greater than ever. While the focus of previous declarations was on the freedom and equality of human beings, the public and social common good of citizens and the preservation of peace, it is now about the future of humanity itself and, associated with it, the question of whether the human being as a person will still have the chance to develop a reasonable identity.

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