Section 13
Original German
Skeptische Ansicht.
Oder aber gienge vielleicht aus dem Rückblicke auf die seit mehr als zwei Tausend Jahren vergeblich gemachten Versuche, eine sichere Grundlage für die Moral zu finden, hervor, daß es gar keine natürliche, von menschlicher Satzung unabhängige Moral gebe, sondern diese durch und durch ein Artefakt sei, ein Mittel, erfunden zur bessern Bändigung des eigensüchtigen und boshaften Menschengeschlechts, und daß sie demnach, ohne die Stütze der positiven Religionen, dahin fallen würde, weil sie keine innere Beglaubigung und keine natürliche Grundlage hätte? Justiz und Polizei können nicht überall ausreichen: es giebt Vergehungen, deren Entdeckung zu schwer, ja einige, deren Bestrafung mißlich ist; wo uns also der öffentliche Schutz verläßt. Zudem kann das bürgerliche Gesetz höchstens Gerechtigkeit, nicht aber Menschenliebe und Wohlthun erzwingen, schon weil hiebei Jeder der passive, Keiner aber der aktive Theil würde seyn wollen. Dies hat die Hypothese veranlaßt, daß die Moral allein auf der Religion beruhe und beide zum Zweck hätten, das Komplement zur nothwendigen Unzulänglichkeit der Staatseinrichtung und Gesetzgebung zu seyn. Eine natürliche, d. h. bloß auf die Natur der Dinge, oder des Menschen gegründete Moral könne es demnach nicht geben: woraus sich erkläre, daß die Philosophen umsonst bestrebt sind, ihr Fundament zu suchen. Diese Meinung ist nicht ohne Scheinbarkeit: schon die Pyrrhoniker stellten sie auf: οὔτε ἀγαθόν τί ἐστι φύσει, οὔτε κακόν,ἀλλὰ πρὸς ἀνθρώπων ταῦτα νόῳ κέκριται,κατὰ τὸν Τίμωνα (neque est aliquod bonum naturâ, neque malum, „sed haec ex arbitrio hominum dijudicantur“, — secundum Timonem). Sext. Emp. adv. Math., XI, 140, und auch in neuerer Zeit haben ausgezeichnete Denker sich zu ihr bekannt. Sie verdient daher eine sorgfältige Prüfung, wenn es gleich bequemer wäre, sie durch einen inquisitoriellen Seitenblick auf das Gewissen Derer, in denen ein solcher Gedanke aufsteigen konnte, zu beseitigen.
Man würde sich in einem großen und sehr jugendlichen Irrthum befinden, wenn man glaubte, daß alle gerechte und legale Handlungen der Menschen moralischen Ursprungs wären. Vielmehr ist zwischen der Gerechtigkeit, welche die Menschen ausüben, und der ächten Redlichkeit des Herzens, meistens ein analoges Verhältniß, wie zwischen den Aeußerungen der Höflichkeit und der ächten Liebe des Nächsten, welche nicht, wie jene, zum Schein, sondern wirklich den Egoismus überwindet. Die überall zur Schau getragene Rechtlichkeit der Gesinnung, welche über jeden Zweifel erhaben seyn will, nebst der hohen Indignation, welche durch die leiseste Andeutung eines Verdachts in dieser Hinsicht rege wird und bereit ist, in den feurigsten Zorn überzugehen, — dies Alles wird nur der Unerfahrene und Einfältige sofort für baare Münze und Wirkung eines zarten moralischen Gefühls oder Gewissens nehmen. In Wahrheit beruht die allgemeine, im menschlichen Verkehr ausgeübte und als felsenfeste Maxime behauptete Rechtlichkeit hauptsächlich auf zwei äußeren Nothwendigkeiten: erstlich auf der gesetzlichen Ordnung, mittelst welcher die öffentliche Gewalt die Rechte eines Jeden schützt, und zweitens auf der erkannten Nothwendigkeit des guten Namens, oder der bürgerlichen Ehre, zum Fortkommen in der Welt, mittelst welcher die Schritte eines Jeden unter der Aufsicht der öffentlichen Meinung stehen, welche, unerbittlich strenge, auch einen einzigen Fehltritt in diesem Stücke nie verzeiht, sondern ihn, als einen unauslöschlichen Makel, dem Schuldigen bis an den Tod nachträgt. Hierin ist sie wirklich weise: denn sie geht von dem Grundsatze operari sequitur esse und demnach von der Ueberzeugung aus, daß der Charakter unveränderlich sei und daher, was Einer ein Mal gethan hat, er unter ganz gleichen Umständen, unausbleiblich wieder thun werde. Diese zwei Wächter also sind es, welche die öffentliche Rechtlichkeit bewachen und ohne welche wir, unverhohlen gesagt, übel daran wären, vorzüglich in Hinsicht auf den Besitz, diesen Hauptpunkt im menschlichen Leben, um welchen hauptsächlich dessen Thun und Treiben sich dreht. Denn die rein ethischen Motive zur Ehrlichkeit, angenommen daß sie vorhanden sind, können meistentheils nur nach einem weiten Umwege ihre Anwendung auf den bürgerlichen Besitz finden. Sie können nämlich sich zunächst und unmittelbar allein auf das natürliche Recht beziehen; auf das positive aber erst mittelbar, sofern nämlich jenes ihm zum Grunde liegt. Das natürliche Recht aber haftet an keinem andern Eigenthum, als an dem durch eigene Mühe erworbenen, durch dessen Angriff die darauf verwendeten Kräfte des Besitzers mit angegriffen, ihm also geraubt werden. — Die Präoccupationstheorie verwerfe ich unbedingt, kann jedoch nicht hier auf ihre Widerlegung eingehen.14 — Nun soll freilich jeder auf positives Recht gegründete Besitz, wenn auch durch noch so viele Mittelglieder, zuletzt und in erster Quelle auf dem natürlichen Eigenthumsrechte beruhen. Aber wie weit liegt nicht, in den meisten Fällen, unser bürgerlicher Besitz von jener Urquelle des natürlichen Eigenthumsrechtes ab! Meistens hat er mit diesem einen sehr schwer oder gar nicht nachweisbaren Zusammenhang: unser Eigenthum ist geerbt, erheirathet, in der Lotterie gewonnen, oder wenn auch das nicht, doch nicht durch eigentliche Arbeit im Schweiße des Angesichts, sondern durch kluge Gedanken und Einfälle erworben, z. B. im Spekulationshandel, ja, mitunter auch durch dumme Einfälle, welche, mittelst des Zufalls, der Deus Eventus gekrönt und verherrlicht hat. In den wenigsten Fällen ist es eigentlich die Frucht wirklicher Mühe und Arbeit, und selbst dann ist diese oft nur eine geistige, wie die der Advokaten, Aerzte, Beamten, Lehrer, welche, nach dem Blicke des rohen Menschen, wenig Anstrengung zu kosten scheint. Es bedarf schon bedeutender Bildung, um bei allem solchen Besitz das ethische Recht zu erkennen und es demnach aus rein moralischem Antriebe zu achten. — Demzufolge betrachten Viele, im Stillen, das Eigenthum der Andern als allein nach positivem Rechte besessen. Finden sie daher Mittel, es ihnen mittelst Benutzung, ja auch nur Umgehung der Gesetze zu entreißen; so tragen sie kein Bedenken: denn ihnen scheint, daß Jene es auf demselben Wege verlören, auf welchem sie es früher erlangt hatten, und sie sehen daher ihre eigenen Ansprüche als eben so gut begründet an, wie die des frühern Besitzers. Von ihrem Gesichtspunkt aus, ist in der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft an die Stelle des Rechtes des Stärkern das des Klügern getreten. — Inzwischen ist der Reiche oft wirklich von einer unverbrüchlichen Rechtlichkeit, weil er von ganzem Herzen einer Regel zugethan ist und eine Maxime aufrecht erhält, auf deren Befolgung sein ganzer Besitz, mit dem Vielen, was er dadurch vor Andern voraus hat, beruht; daher er zu dem Grundsatze suum cuique sich in vollem Ernst bekennt und nicht davon abweicht. Es giebt in der That eine solche objektive Anhänglichkeit an Treue und Glauben, mit dem Entschluß, sie heilig zu halten, die bloß darauf beruht, daß Treue und Glauben die Grundlage alles freien Verkehrs unter Menschen, der guten Ordnung und des sichern Besitzes sind, daher sie uns selbst gar oft zu Gute kommen und in dieser Hinsicht sogar mit Opfern aufrecht gehalten werden müssen; wie man ja an einen guten Acker auch etwas wendet. Doch wird man die so begründete Redlichkeit, in der Regel, nur bei wohlhabenden, oder wenigstens einem einträglichen Erwerb obliegenden Leuten finden, am allermeisten bei Kaufleuten, als welche die deutlichste Ueberzeugung haben, daß Handel und Wandel am gegenseitigen Vertrauen und Kredit ihre unentbehrliche Stütze haben; weshalb auch die kaufmännische Ehre eine ganz spezielle ist. — Hingegen der Arme, der bei der Sache zu kurz gekommen ist und vermöge der Ungleichheit des Besitzes, sich zu Mangel und schwerer Arbeit verdammt sieht, während Andere, vor seinen Augen, im Ueberfluß und Müssiggange leben, der wird schwerlich erkennen, daß dieser Ungleichheit eine entsprechende der Verdienste und des redlichen Erwerbes zum Grunde liege. Wenn er aber dies nicht erkennt, woher soll er dann den rein ethischen Antrieb zur Ehrlichkeit nehmen, der ihn abhält, seine Hand nach dem fremden Ueberflusse auszustrecken? Meistens ist es die gesetzliche Ordnung, die ihn zurückhält. Aber wenn ein Mal die seltene Gelegenheit kommt, wo er, vor der Wirkung des Gesetzes gesichert, durch eine einzige That die drückende Last des Mangels, welche der Anblick des fremden Ueberflusses noch fühlbarer macht, von sich wälzen und auch sich in den Besitz der so oft beneideten Genüsse setzen könnte, was wird da seine Hand zurückhalten? Religiöse Dogmen? Selten ist der Glaube so fest. Ein rein moralisches Motiv zur Gerechtigkeit? Vielleicht in einzelnen Fällen: aber in den allermeisten wird es dann nur die auch dem geringen Manne sehr angelegene Sorge für seinen guten Namen, seine bürgerliche Ehre seyn, die augenscheinliche Gefahr, durch eine solche That auf immer ausgestoßen zu werden aus der großen Freimaurerloge der ehrlichen Leute, welche das Gesetz der Rechtlichkeit befolgen und danach auf der ganzen Erde das Eigenthum unter sich vertheilt haben und verwalten, die Gefahr, in Folge einer einzigen unehrlichen Handlung, Zeit Lebens ein Paria der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft zu seyn, Einer, dem Keiner mehr traut, dessen Gemeinschaft Jeder flieht und dem dadurch alles Fortkommen abgeschnitten ist, d. h. mit Einem Wort: „Ein Kerl, der gestohlen hat“, — und auf den das Sprichwort geht: „Wer Ein Mal stiehlt, ist Zeit Lebens ein Dieb.“
Dies also sind die Wächter der öffentlichen Rechtlichkeit: und wer gelebt und die Augen offen gehabt hat, wird eingestehen, daß bei weitem die allermeiste Ehrlichkeit im menschlichen Verkehr nur ihnen zu verdanken ist, ja, daß es nicht an Leuten fehlt, die auch ihrer Wachsamkeit sich zu entziehen hoffen, und die daher Gerechtigkeit und Redlichkeit nur als ein Aushängeschild, als eine Flagge betrachten, unter deren Schutz man seine Kapereien mit desto besserm Erfolge ausführt. Wir haben also nicht sogleich in heiligem Eifer aufzufahren und in Harnisch zu gerathen, wenn ein Moralist ein Mal das Problem aufwirft, ob nicht vielleicht alle Redlichkeit und Gerechtigkeit im Grunde bloß konventionell wäre, und er demnächst, dieses Princip weiter verfolgend, auch die ganze übrige Moral auf entferntere, mittelbare, zuletzt aber doch egoistische Gründe zurückzuführen sich bemüht, wie Holbach, Helvetius, d'Alembert und Andere ihrer Zeit es scharfsinnig versucht haben. Von dem größten Theil der gerechten Handlungen ist dies sogar wirklich wahr und richtig, wie ich im Obigen gezeigt habe. Daß es auch von einem beträchtlichen Theil der Handlungen der Menschenliebe wahr sei, leidet keinen Zweifel; da sie oft aus Ostentation, sehr oft aus dem Glauben an eine dereinstige Retribution, die wohl gar in der Quadrat- oder vollends Kubik-Zahl geleistet würde, hervorgehen, auch noch andere egoistische Gründe zulassen. Allein eben so gewiß ist es, daß es Handlungen uneigennütziger Menschenliebe und ganz freiwilliger Gerechtigkeit giebt. Beweise der letzteren sind, um mich nicht auf Thatsachen des Bewußtseyns, sondern nur der Erfahrung zu berufen, die einzelnen, aber unzweifelhaften Fälle, wo nicht nur die Gefahr gesetzlicher Verfolgung, sondern auch die der Entdeckung und selbst jedes Verdachtes ganz ausgeschlossen war, und dennoch selbst vom Armen dem Reichen das Seinige gegeben wurde: z. B., wo ein Verlorenes und Gefundenes, wo ein von einem Dritten und bereits Verstorbenen Deponirtes dem Eigenthümer gebracht wurde, wo ein im Geheimen von einem Landesflüchtigen bei einem armen Manne gemachtes Depositum treulich bewahrt und zurückgegeben wurde. Dergleichen Fälle giebt es, ohne Zweifel: allein die Ueberraschung, die Rührung, die Hochachtung, womit wir sie entgegennehmen, bezeugen deutlich, daß sie zu den unerwarteten Dingen, den seltenen Ausnahmen gehören. Es giebt in der That wahrhaft ehrliche Leute; — wie es auch wirklich vierblätterigen Klee giebt: aber Hamlet spricht ohne Hyperbel, wenn er sagt: To be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man pick’d out of ten thousand.15 — Gegen den Einwand, daß den oben erwähnten Handlungen zuletzt religiöse Dogmen, mithin Rücksicht auf Strafe und Belohnung in einer andern Welt, zum Grunde lagen, würden sich auch wohl Fälle nachweisen lassen, wo die Vollbringer derselben gar keinem Religionsglauben anhiengen; was lange nicht so selten ist, wie das öffentliche Bekenntniß der Sache.
Man beruft sich, der skeptischen Ansicht gegenüber, zunächst auf das Gewissen. Aber auch gegen dessen natürlichen Ursprung werden Zweifel erhoben. Wenigstens giebt es auch eine conscientia spuria, die oft mit demselben verwechselt wird. Die Reue und Beängstigung, welche Mancher über Das, was er gethan hat, empfindet, ist oft im Grunde nichts Anderes, als die Furcht vor Dem, was ihm dafür geschehen kann. Die Verletzung äußerlicher, willkührlicher und sogar abgeschmackter Satzungen quält Manchen mit inneren Vorwürfen, ganz nach Art des Gewissens. So z. B. liegt es manchem bigotten Juden wirklich schwer auf dem Herzen, daß, obgleich es im zweiten Buch Mose, Kap. 35, 3, heißt: „Ihr sollt kein Feuer anzünden am Sabbathtage in allen euren Wohnungen“, er doch am Sonnabend zu Hause eine Pfeife geraucht hat. Manchen Edelmann, oder Offizier, nagt der heimliche Selbstvorwurf, daß er, bei irgend einem Vorfall, den Gesetzen des Narrenkodex, den man ritterliche Ehre nennt, nicht gehörig nachgekommen sei: dies geht so weit, daß Mancher dieses Standes, wenn, in die Unmöglichkeit versetzt, sein gegebenes Ehrenwort zu halten, oder auch nur besagtem Kodex bei Streitigkeiten Genüge zu leisten, sich todtschießen wird. (Ich habe Beides erlebt.) Hingegen wird der selbe Mann alle Tage leichten Herzens sein Wort brechen, sobald nur nicht das Schiboleth „Ehre“ hinzugefügt war. — Ueberhaupt jede Inkonsequenz, jede Unbedachtsamkeit, jedes Handeln gegen unsere Vorsätze, Grundsätze, Ueberzeugungen, welcher Art sie auch seien, ja, jede Indiskretion, jeder Fehlgriff, jede Balourdise wurmt uns hinterher im Stillen und läßt einen Stachel im Herzen zurück. Mancher würde sich wundern, wenn er sähe, woraus sein Gewissen, das ihm ganz stattlich vorkommt, eigentlich zusammengesetzt ist: etwan aus 1/5 Menschenfurcht, 1/5 Deisidämonie, 1/5 Vorurtheil, 1/5 Eitelkeit und 1/5 Gewohnheit: so daß er im Grunde nicht besser ist, als jener Engländer, der geradezu sagte: I cannot afford to keep a conscience (ein Gewissen zu halten ist für mich zu kostspielig). — Religiöse Leute, jedes Glaubens, verstehen unter Gewissen sehr oft nichts Anderes, als die Dogmen und Vorschristen ihrer Religion und die in Beziehung auf diese vorgenommene Selbstprüfung: in diesem Sinne werden ja auch die Ausdrücke Gewissenszwang und Gewissensfreiheit genommen: Die Theologen, Scholastiker und Kasuistiker der mittlern und spätern Zeit nahmen es ebenso: Alles was Einer von Satzungen und Vorschriften der Kirche wußte, nebst dem Vorsatz es zu glauben und zu befolgen, machte sein Gewissen aus. Demgemäß gab es ein zweifelndes, ein meinendes, ein irrendes Gewissen u. dgl. m., zu deren Berichtigung man sich einen Gewissensrath hielt. Wie wenig der Begriff des Gewissens, gleich andern Begriffen, durch sein Objekt selbst festgestellt ist, wie verschieden er von Verschiedenen gefaßt worden, wie schwankend und unsicher er bei den Schriftstellern erscheint, kann man in der Kürze ersehen aus Stäudlins „Geschichte der Lehre vom Gewissen“. Alles dieses ist nicht geeignet, die Realität des Begriffes zu beglaubigen, und hat daher die Frage veranlaßt, ob es denn auch wirklich ein eigentliches, angeborenes Gewissen gebe? Ich bin bereits §. 10, bei der Lehre von der Freiheit, veranlaßt worden, meinen Begriff vom Gewissen kurz anzugeben, und werde weiter unten darauf zurückkommen.
Diese sämmtlichen skeptischen Bedenklichkeiten reichen zwar keineswegs hin, das Daseyn aller ächten Moralität abzuleugnen, wohl aber unsere Erwartungen von der moralischen Anlage im Menschen und mithin vom natürlichen Fundament der Ethik zu mäßigen; da so Vieles, was diesem zugeschrieben wird, nachweislich von andern Triebfedern herrührt, und die Betrachtung der moralischen Verderbniß der Welt genugsam beweist, daß die Triebfeder zum Guten keine sehr mächtige seyn kann, zumal weil sie oft selbst da nicht wirkt, wo die ihr entgegenstehenden Motive nicht stark sind; wiewohl hiebei der individuelle Unterschied der Charaktere seine volle Gültigkeit behauptet. Inzwischen wird die Erkenntniß jener moralischen Verderbniß dadurch erschwert, daß die Aeußerungen derselben gehemmt und verdeckt werden durch die gesetzliche Ordnung, durch die Nothwendigkeit der Ehre, ja, auch noch durch die Höflichkeit. Endlich kommt noch hinzu, daß man bei der Erziehung die Moralität der Zöglinge dadurch zu befördern vermeint, daß man ihnen Rechtlichkeit und Tugend als die in der Welt allgemein befolgten Maximen darstellt: wenn nun später die Erfahrung sie, und oft zu ihrem großen Schaden, eines Andern belehrt; so kann die Entdeckung, daß ihre Jugendlehrer die Ersten waren, welche sie betrogen, nachtheiliger auf ihre eigene Moralität wirken, als wenn diese Lehrer ihnen das erste Beispiel der Offenherzigkeit und Redlichkeit selbst gegeben und unverhohlen gesagt hätten: „Die Welt liegt im Argen, die Menschen sind nicht, wie sie seyn sollten; aber laß' es Dich nicht irren und sei Du besser.“ — Alles dieses, wie gesagt, erschwert unsere Erkenntniß der wirklichen Immoralität des Menschengeschlechts. Der Staat, dieses Meisterstück des sich selbst verstehenden, vernünftigen, aufsummirten Egoismus Aller, hat den Schutz der Rechte eines Jeden in die Hände einer Gewalt gegeben, welche, der Macht jedes Einzelnen unendlich überlegen, ihn zwingt, die Rechte aller Andern zu achten. Da kann der gränzenlose Egoismus fast Aller, die Bosheit Vieler, die Grausamkeit Mancher sich nicht hervorthun: der Zwang hat Alle gebändigt. Die hieraus entspringende Täuschung ist so groß, daß, wenn wir in einzelnen Fällen, wo die Staatsgewalt nicht schützen kann, oder eludirt wird, die unersättliche Habsucht, die niederträchtige Geldgier, die tief versteckte Falschheit, die tückische Bosheit der Menschen hervortreten sehen, wir oft zurückschrecken und ein Zetergeschrei erheben, vermeinend, ein noch nie gesehenes Monstrum sei uns aufgestoßen: allein ohne den Zwang der Gesetze und die Nothwendigkeit der bürgerlichen Ehre würden dergleichen Vorgänge ganz an der Tagesordnung seyn. Kriminalgeschichten und Beschreibungen anarchischer Zustände muß man lesen, um zu erkennen, was, in moralischer Hinsicht, der Mensch eigentlich ist. Diese Tausende, die da, vor unsern Augen, im friedlichen Verkehr sich durcheinander drängen, sind anzusehen als eben so viele Tiger und Wölfe, deren Gebiß durch einen starken Maulkorb gesichert ist. Daher, wenn man sich die Staatsgewalt ein Mal aufgehoben, d. h. jenen Maulkorb abgeworfen denkt, jeder Einsichtige zurückbebt vor dem Schauspiele, das dann zu erwarten stände; wodurch er zu erkennen giebt, wie wenig Wirkung er der Religion, dem Gewissen, oder dem natürlichen Fundament der Moral, welches es auch immer seyn möge, im Grunde zutraut. Aber gerade alsdann würde, jenen freigelassenen unmoralischen Potenzen gegenüber, auch die wahre moralische Triebfeder im Menschen ihre Wirksamkeit unverdeckt zeigen, folglich am leichtesten erkannt werden können; wobei zugleich die unglaublich große moralische Verschiedenheit der Charaktere unverschleiert hervortreten und eben so groß befunden werden würde, wie die intellektuelle der Köpfe; womit gewiß viel gesagt ist.
Man wird mir vielleicht entgegensetzen wollen, daß die Ethik es nicht damit zu thun habe, wie die Menschen wirklich handeln, sondern die Wissenschaft sei, welche angiebt, wie sie handeln sollen. Dies ist aber gerade der Grundsatz, den ich leugne, nachdem ich im kritischen Theile dieser Abhandlung genugsam dargethan habe, daß der Begriff des Sollens, die imperative Form der Ethik, allein in der theologischen Moral gilt, außerhalb derselben aber allen Sinn und Bedeutung verliert. Ich setze hingegen der Ethik den Zweck, die in moralischer Hinsicht höchst verschiedene Handlungsweise der Menschen zu deuten, zu erklären und auf ihren letzten Grund zurückzuführen. Daher bleibt zur Auffindung des Fundaments der Ethik kein anderer Weg, als der empirische, nämlich zu untersuchen, ob es überhaupt Handlungen giebt, denen wir ächten moralischen Werth zuerkennen müssen, — welches die Handlungen freiwilliger Gerechtigkeit, reiner Menschenliebe und wirklichen Edelmuths seyn werden. Diese sind sodann als ein gegebenes Phänomen zu betrachten, welches wir richtig zu erklären, d. h. auf seine wahren Gründe zurückzuführen, mithin die jedenfalls eigenthümliche Triebfeder nachzuweisen haben, welche den Menschen zu Handlungen dieser, von jeder andern specifisch verschiedenen Art bewegt. Diese Triebfeder, nebst der Empfänglichkeit für sie, wird der letzte Grund der Moralität und die Kenntniß derselben das Fundament der Moral seyn. Dies ist der bescheidene Weg, auf welchen ich die Ethik hinweise. Wem er, als keine Konstruktion a priori, keine absolute Gesetzgebung für alle vernünftige Wesen in abstracto enthaltend, nicht vornehm, kathedralisch und akademisch genug dünkt, der mag zurückkehren zu den kategorischen Imperativen, zum Schiboleth der „Würde des Menschen“; zu den hohlen Redensarten, den Hirngespinsten und Seifenblasen der Schulen, zu Principien, denen die Erfahrung bei jedem Schritte Hohn spricht und von welchen außerhalb der Hörsäle kein Mensch etwas weiß, noch jemals empfunden hat. Dem auf meinem Wege sich ergebenden Fundament der Moral hingegen steht die Erfahrung zur Seite und legt täglich und stündlich ihr stilles Zeugniß für dasselbe ab.
14 Siehe „Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung“, Bd. 1, §. 62, S. 396 ff., und Bd. 2, Kap. 47, S. 682.
15 Nach dem Laufe dieser Welt heißt ehrlich seyn: ein aus zehntausend Auserwählter seyn.
Musean translation
Machine-assisted Musean translation made directly from the complete 1860 German edition, including its quotations, author’s notes, prize question and judgment. Source-language reviewed.
The Skeptical View.
Or might it perhaps follow, from a look back at the attempts made in vain for more than two thousand years to find a secure foundation for morality, that there is no natural morality at all, none independent of human ordinance, but that morality is through and through an artifact, a device invented for the better taming of the selfish and malicious human race, and that without the support of the positive religions it would therefore fall away, since it would have no inner warrant and no natural foundation? Justice and police cannot suffice everywhere: there are offenses whose detection is too difficult, and even some whose punishment is a delicate matter, so that here public protection leaves us. Moreover, civil law can compel at most justice, but not loving-kindness and beneficence, if only because in these everyone would wish to be the passive party and no one the active. This has given rise to the hypothesis that morality rests on religion alone, and that the purpose of the two is to be the complement to the necessary insufficiency of the state's institutions and legislation. A natural morality, that is, one founded merely on the nature of things or of human beings, could therefore not exist; which would explain why philosophers strive in vain to seek its foundation. This opinion is not without plausibility: the Pyrrhonists already put it forward: Nothing is good by nature, and nothing bad,but these things are decided by human beings, through opinion,according to Timon (nothing is good by nature, nor anything bad, "but these things are decided by human discretion,"—according to Timon). Sext. Emp. adv. Math., XI, 140, and in more recent times, too, distinguished thinkers have declared for it. It therefore deserves careful examination, even if it would be more comfortable to dispose of it with an inquisitorial sidelong glance at the conscience of those in whom such a thought could arise.
One would be caught in a great and very youthful error to believe that all just and lawful actions of human beings are of moral origin. Rather, between the justice that people practice and genuine uprightness of heart there is for the most part a relation analogous to that between the expressions of politeness and genuine love of one's neighbor, which, unlike politeness, overcomes egoism not in appearance but in fact. The rectitude of disposition displayed everywhere, which wants to stand above every doubt, together with the lofty indignation that the faintest hint of suspicion in this regard arouses, and that is ready to flare into the most fiery wrath—all this only the inexperienced and simple will at once take for hard coin and the effect of a delicate moral feeling or conscience. In truth, the rectitude that is general, practiced in human intercourse and asserted as a rock-solid maxim, rests chiefly on two external necessities: first, on legal order, by which public power protects everyone's rights; and second, on the recognized necessity of a good name, or civic honor, for getting on in the world, by which everyone's steps are kept under the supervision of public opinion—which, inexorably strict, never forgives even a single misstep in this matter, but holds it against the guilty as an indelible stain until death. In this it is truly wise: for it proceeds from the principle that acting follows being (operari sequitur esse), and hence from the conviction that character is unchangeable, and that what someone has done once, they will inevitably do again under entirely identical circumstances. These two guardians, then, are what keep watch over public rectitude, and without them we should, frankly speaking, be in a bad way, above all with regard to property, that chief point in human life around which its doings and dealings mainly turn. For the purely ethical motives for honesty, supposing they exist, can in most cases find their application to civil property only after a long detour. They can, that is, relate first and immediately only to natural right, and to positive right only indirectly, namely insofar as the former underlies it. But natural right attaches to no property other than what has been acquired by one's own effort, an attack on which also attacks the powers the owner expended on it, and so robs the owner of them.—The theory of prior occupation I reject unconditionally, but I cannot enter here into its refutation.14—Now, to be sure, every possession founded on positive right is supposed, however many intermediate links there may be, to rest in the end and at its first source on the natural right of property. But in most cases, how far our civil possessions lie from that primal source of the natural right of property! For the most part they have with it a connection very hard or quite impossible to demonstrate: our property is inherited, married into, won in the lottery, or, if not that, then acquired not by real labor in the sweat of one's brow but by clever thoughts and notions, for example in speculative trading, and sometimes even by stupid notions which, by way of chance, the god of Outcome (Deus Eventus) has crowned and glorified. In the fewest cases is it really the fruit of actual effort and work, and even then this is often only mental, like that of lawyers, physicians, officials, teachers, which in the eyes of the crude person seems to cost little exertion. It takes considerable education to recognize the ethical right in all such property and, accordingly, to respect it from a purely moral impulse.—Accordingly, many quietly regard the property of others as held by positive right alone. If they therefore find means to wrest it from them by exploiting, or even merely circumventing, the laws, they have no scruples: for it seems to them that the others would be losing it by the same road by which they had earlier gained it, and so they regard their own claims as just as well founded as those of the former owner. From their standpoint, in civil society the right of the shrewder has taken the place of the right of the stronger.—Meanwhile the rich are often truly of an inviolable rectitude, because they are devoted with all their hearts to a rule and uphold a maxim on whose observance their entire property, with the many advantages it gives them over others, rests; hence they profess the principle "to each what is theirs" in full earnest and do not depart from it. There really is such an objective attachment to good faith, with the resolve to hold it sacred, resting merely on this: that good faith is the foundation of all free intercourse among human beings, of good order and of secure property, so that it very often benefits ourselves and in this respect must be upheld even at some sacrifice, just as one, after all, puts some expense into a good field. Yet uprightness so grounded will, as a rule, be found only among people who are well off, or at least engaged in a profitable occupation, most of all among merchants, who have the plainest conviction that trade and traffic find their indispensable support in mutual trust and credit; which is why mercantile honor is quite a special kind.—The poor, by contrast, who have come off short in the business and, by virtue of the inequality of possessions, see themselves condemned to want and heavy labor while others, before their eyes, live in abundance and idleness, will hardly recognize that a corresponding inequality of merit and honest earnings underlies this inequality. But if they do not recognize this, where are they then to get the purely ethical impulse to honesty that keeps them from stretching out a hand toward another's abundance? Mostly it is legal order that holds them back. But when once the rare opportunity comes in which, safe from the operation of the law, they could by a single deed roll off themselves the crushing burden of want, which the sight of another's abundance makes still more palpable, and put themselves too in possession of the pleasures so often envied, what will hold their hand back then? Religious dogmas? Faith is seldom so firm. A purely moral motive for justice? Perhaps in isolated cases; but in the great majority it will be only the concern for their good name, their civic honor—a concern that matters greatly even to the lowly—the evident danger of being cast out forever, by such a deed, from the great Masonic lodge of honest people, who follow the law of rectitude and, in accordance with it, have divided property among themselves over the whole earth and administer it; the danger of being, as a result of a single dishonest act, a pariah of civil society for life, one whom no one trusts any longer, whose company everyone flees, and to whom all advancement is thereby cut off—that is, in a word, "a fellow who has stolen,"—and to whom the proverb applies: "Whoever steals once is a thief for life."
These, then, are the guardians of public rectitude; and whoever has lived with open eyes will admit that by far the greater part of honesty in human intercourse is owed to them alone—indeed, that there is no lack of people who hope to slip even their vigilance, and who therefore regard justice and uprightness merely as a shop sign, as a flag under whose protection one carries out one's privateering with all the better success. We need not, then, flare up at once in holy zeal and fly into a rage if a moralist once raises the problem whether all uprightness and justice might not at bottom be merely conventional, and then, pursuing this principle further, strives to trace the whole remainder of morality back to remoter, indirect, but in the end still egoistic grounds, as Holbach, Helvetius, d'Alembert and others of their time have acutely attempted. Of the greater part of just actions this is in fact really true and correct, as I have shown above. That it is true also of a considerable part of the actions of loving-kindness admits of no doubt; for they often spring from ostentation, very often from belief in a future retribution, which would be paid out perhaps even in the square or, better still, the cube, and they admit still other egoistic grounds besides. But it is just as certain that there are actions of disinterested loving-kindness and wholly voluntary justice. Proofs of the latter—so that I appeal not to facts of consciousness but only to experience—are the isolated but undoubted cases in which not only the danger of legal prosecution but also that of discovery, and even of any suspicion, was wholly excluded, and yet even the poor gave the rich what was theirs: for example, where something lost and found, or something deposited by a third party who had since died, was brought to its owner; where a deposit made in secret by a fugitive from the country with a poor man was faithfully kept and returned. Cases of this kind exist, without doubt; but the surprise, the emotion, the esteem with which we receive them plainly attest that they belong among unexpected things, rare exceptions. There truly are genuinely honest people—just as there truly is four-leaf clover; but Hamlet speaks without hyperbole when he says: To be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man pick’d out of ten thousand.15—Against the objection that the actions mentioned above ultimately rested on religious dogmas, and thus on regard for punishment and reward in another world, cases could also be adduced in which those who performed them clung to no religious belief whatever; which is far less rare than the public admission of the fact.
Against the skeptical view, people appeal first of all to conscience. But doubts are raised against its natural origin as well. At the least, there is also a spurious conscience, which is often confused with it. The remorse and anguish that many feel over what they have done is often at bottom nothing other than fear of what may happen to them for it. The violation of external, arbitrary, and even absurd statutes torments many with inward reproaches, quite in the manner of conscience. Thus, for example, some bigoted Jews are genuinely weighed down in heart because, although the second Book of Moses, Kap. 35, 3, says: "You shall kindle no fire on the Sabbath day in all your dwellings," they have nonetheless smoked a pipe at home on a Saturday. Many nobles and officers are gnawed by the secret self-reproach that, on some occasion, they have not duly complied with the laws of that fool's code which is called chivalrous honor; and this goes so far that some of this class, when placed in the impossibility of keeping their given word of honor, or merely of satisfying the said code in quarrels, will shoot themselves dead. (I have witnessed both.) The same man, on the other hand, will break his word every day with a light heart, provided only that the shibboleth "honor" was not attached to it.—In general, every inconsistency, every thoughtlessness, every act against our resolutions, principles, convictions, of whatever kind, indeed every indiscretion, every blunder, every gaffe, rankles in us afterward in silence and leaves a sting in the heart. Many would be astonished to see what their conscience, which strikes them as quite stately, is actually composed of: perhaps 1/5 fear of people, 1/5 superstitious dread, 1/5 prejudice, 1/5 vanity, and 1/5 habit; so that at bottom they are no better than that Englishman who said bluntly: I cannot afford to keep a conscience (to keep a conscience is too costly for me).—Religious people of every faith very often mean by conscience nothing other than the dogmas and precepts of their religion and the self-examination undertaken in relation to them; in this sense, after all, the expressions coercion of conscience and freedom of conscience are also taken. The theologians, scholastics, and casuists of the middle and later periods took it likewise: everything that a person knew of the statutes and precepts of the church, together with the resolve to believe and obey them, made up that person's conscience. Accordingly there was a doubting conscience, an opining conscience, an erring conscience, and the like, for whose correction one kept a counselor of conscience. How little the concept of conscience, like other concepts, is fixed by its object itself, how differently it has been grasped by different people, how wavering and uncertain it appears among the writers, can be seen briefly from Stäudlin's "History of the Doctrine of Conscience." All this is not suited to vouch for the reality of the concept, and has therefore occasioned the question whether there is indeed a genuine, innate conscience at all. I have already been led, in §. 10, in the doctrine of freedom, to give my concept of conscience briefly, and I shall return to it further below.
All these skeptical misgivings are by no means enough to deny the existence of all genuine morality, but they are certainly enough to temper our expectations of the moral predisposition in human beings, and hence of the natural foundation of ethics; since so much that is ascribed to it demonstrably stems from other incentives, and contemplation of the moral corruption of the world proves sufficiently that the incentive to the good cannot be a very powerful one, especially because it often fails to act even where the motives opposing it are not strong; although in this the individual difference of characters retains its full validity. Meanwhile, knowledge of that moral corruption is made harder by the fact that its manifestations are checked and concealed by legal order, by the necessity of honor, and even by politeness besides. Finally there is this to add: in education one supposes that one promotes the morality of one's pupils by presenting rectitude and virtue to them as the maxims universally followed in the world; if experience later teaches them otherwise, and often to their great harm, then the discovery that their teachers in youth were the first to deceive them can work more harmfully on their own morality than if those teachers had themselves given them the first example of candor and uprightness and had said without disguise: "The world lies in wickedness, people are not as they ought to be; but do not let it lead you astray, and be better yourself."—All this, as said, makes it harder for us to know the real immorality of the human race. The state, this masterpiece of the self-understanding, rational, summed-up egoism of all, has placed the protection of everyone's rights in the hands of a power which, infinitely superior to the might of any individual, compels each to respect the rights of all others. There the boundless egoism of nearly all, the malice of many, the cruelty of some cannot show itself: compulsion has tamed everyone. The illusion arising from this is so great that when, in isolated cases where state power cannot protect or is evaded, we see the insatiable avarice, the base greed for money, the deeply hidden falsity, the insidious malice of human beings come forth, we often recoil and raise a hue and cry, imagining that some monster never seen before has crossed our path; yet without the compulsion of the laws and the necessity of civic honor, such occurrences would be quite the order of the day. One must read criminal histories and descriptions of anarchic conditions to recognize what the human being, in moral respects, really is. These thousands who jostle one another there before our eyes in peaceful traffic are to be regarded as so many tigers and wolves whose bite is secured by a strong muzzle. Hence, when one imagines state power once abolished, that is, that muzzle thrown off, everyone of insight recoils from the spectacle to be expected; thereby revealing how little effect they at bottom credit to religion, to conscience, or to the natural foundation of morality, whatever it may be. But precisely then, confronted with those unleashed immoral powers, the true moral incentive in human beings would also show its efficacy uncovered, and consequently could be most easily recognized; whereby at the same time the incredibly great moral difference of characters would step forth unveiled and be found just as great as the intellectual difference of heads; which surely says a great deal.
Perhaps it will be objected to me that ethics has nothing to do with how human beings actually act, but is the science that states how they ought to act. But this is precisely the principle I deny, having shown sufficiently in the critical part of this treatise that the concept of the ought, the imperative form of ethics, holds only in theological morality, and outside it loses all sense and meaning. I, on the contrary, set ethics the task of interpreting and explaining the conduct of human beings, so extremely various in moral respect, and of tracing it back to its ultimate ground. Hence for the discovery of the foundation of ethics no other path remains than the empirical one, namely to inquire whether there are any actions at all to which we must ascribe genuine moral worth—which will be the actions of voluntary justice, pure loving-kindness, and real magnanimity. These are then to be regarded as a given phenomenon, which we have to explain correctly, that is, to trace back to its true grounds, and thus to demonstrate the incentive—in any case a peculiar one—which moves human beings to actions of this kind, specifically different from every other. This incentive, together with receptivity to it, will be the ultimate ground of morality, and knowledge of it the foundation of morality. This is the modest path to which I direct ethics. Whoever finds it, being no construction a priori and containing no absolute legislation for all rational beings in the abstract, not lofty, professorial, and academic enough, may go back to the categorical imperatives, to the shibboleth of the "dignity of man"; to the hollow phrases, the chimeras and soap bubbles of the schools, to principles which experience mocks at every step and of which, outside the lecture halls, no one knows anything or has ever felt anything. The foundation of morality that results on my path, by contrast, has experience at its side, which bears its silent witness to it daily and hourly.
14 See "The World as Will and Representation," Bd. 1, §. 62, S. 396 ff., and Bd. 2, Kap. 47, S. 682.
15 As this world goes, to be honest means to be one chosen out of ten thousand.
Plain English translation
Independent, machine-assisted Plain English translation made directly from the complete 1860 German edition and its embedded passages. Source-language reviewed.
The skeptical view.
Or does a look back over the attempts that have been made in vain for more than two thousand years to find a secure foundation for morality perhaps show that there is no natural morality at all, none independent of human rules? Is morality, on this view, through and through an artifact, a device invented to keep the selfish and spiteful human race under better control? And would it therefore fall away without the support of the positive religions, because it would have no inner proof and no natural basis? Justice and police cannot be enough everywhere. Some offenses are too hard to discover, and for some, punishment is awkward. In such cases public protection leaves us. Besides, civil law can at most enforce justice. It cannot enforce love of humanity and kindness, if only because in such cases everyone would want to be the one who receives and no one the one who gives. This has led to the hypothesis that morality rests on religion alone, and that the purpose of both is to make up for the unavoidable shortcomings of the state's institutions and legislation. So, the claim goes, there can be no natural morality, that is, one based only on the nature of things or of human beings. That would explain why philosophers search in vain for its foundation. This opinion is not without plausibility. The Pyrrhonists already put it forward: Nothing is good by nature, and nothing is bad,but people have judged these things by what they think,according to Timon (nothing is good by nature, and nothing is bad, "but these things are judged at the choice of human beings,"—according to Timon). Sext. Emp. adv. Math., XI, 140. Outstanding thinkers in more recent times have also declared themselves for it. So it deserves careful examination, even though it would be more convenient to dismiss it with an inquisitor's sidelong glance at the conscience of those in whom such a thought could arise.
We would be making a great and very youthful mistake if we believed that all the just and lawful actions of human beings have a moral origin. Most of the time, the relation between the justice people practice and genuine honesty of heart is much like the relation between expressions of politeness and genuine love of one's neighbor. Genuine love, unlike politeness, does not merely seem to overcome egoism. It really does. People show off the integrity of their attitude everywhere and want it to be beyond all doubt. They show great indignation at the faintest hint of suspicion on this point, and that indignation is ready to turn into the fiercest anger. Only the inexperienced and simple-minded will take all this at once for hard cash, and for the effect of a delicate moral feeling or conscience. In truth, the integrity that is generally practiced in human dealings, and held up as a rock-solid maxim, rests mainly on two outside necessities. The first is the legal order, through which public authority protects everyone's rights. The second is the recognized need for a good name, or civil honor, in order to get ahead in the world. Through this need, everyone's steps stand under the watch of public opinion. Public opinion is relentlessly strict. It never forgives even a single misstep in this matter. It holds it against the guilty person until death, as an indelible stain. In this, public opinion is truly wise. It starts from the principle "acting follows being" (operari sequitur esse), and so from the conviction that character does not change. Therefore, whatever someone has done once, that person will inevitably do again under exactly the same circumstances. These two guards, then, are what watch over public integrity. Without them, to speak frankly, we would be in a bad way, especially with regard to property. Property is the chief point in human life, the one around which its activity mainly turns. For purely ethical motives for honesty, assuming they exist, can mostly find their application to civil property only after a long detour. First and directly, they can relate only to natural right. They can relate to positive law only indirectly, insofar as natural right underlies it. But natural right attaches to no property except what has been acquired by one's own effort. If someone attacks such property, the powers the owner spent on it are attacked too, and so are stolen from the owner. I reject the theory of first occupation outright, but I cannot go into refuting it here.14 Now, of course, every possession founded on positive law is supposed to rest in the end, at its first source, on the natural right of property, however many intermediate links there may be. But in most cases, how far our civil property lies from that original source of the natural right of property! Usually the connection between the two is very hard to demonstrate, or cannot be demonstrated at all. Our property is inherited, married into, or won in a lottery. Or if it is none of these, it was still not gained by real labor in the sweat of our brow, but by clever thoughts and ideas, for example in speculative trading. Sometimes it was even gained by stupid ideas, which the god of outcomes, Deus Eventus, has crowned and glorified by way of chance. In very few cases is property really the fruit of genuine effort and labor. Even then, the labor is often only mental, like that of lawyers, doctors, officials and teachers. To a crude person's eye, such work seems to cost little effort. It takes considerable education to recognize the ethical right in all such property, and so to respect it from a purely moral impulse. As a result, many people privately regard other people's property as held by positive law alone. So if they find a way to take it from them by using the laws, or even just getting around them, they have no scruples. It seems to them that the owners are losing it by the same route by which they obtained it earlier. So they consider their own claims just as well founded as those of the former owner. From their point of view, in civil society the right of the cleverer has taken the place of the right of the stronger. Meanwhile, a rich person is often truly of unbreakable integrity. They are devoted with their whole heart to a rule, and they uphold a maxim on whose observance their entire property rests, along with the many advantages they thereby have over others. So they profess the principle "to each person what belongs to them" (suum cuique) in full earnest and do not depart from it. There really is such an objective attachment to good faith, with a resolve to hold it sacred. It rests only on the fact that good faith is the basis of all free dealings among people, of good order and of secure property. So it often benefits us ourselves, and in this respect it even has to be upheld at some cost, just as we also spend something on a good field. Yet honesty with this basis will, as a rule, be found only among well-off people, or at least people engaged in profitable work. It is found most of all among merchants, who have the clearest conviction that trade and commerce have their indispensable support in mutual trust and credit. That is also why the merchant's honor is a quite special kind. The poor person is different. They have come off badly in the matter. Because of the inequality of property, they see themselves condemned to want and hard work, while others, before their eyes, live in abundance and idleness. This person will hardly recognize that a corresponding inequality of merit and honest earnings underlies this inequality. But if they do not recognize this, where are they to get the purely ethical drive toward honesty that keeps them from reaching out a hand for other people's abundance? Mostly it is the legal order that holds them back. But suppose the rare opportunity comes once, in which they are safe from the effect of the law. By a single deed they could roll off the crushing burden of want, which the sight of other people's abundance makes even more painful. They could also put themselves in possession of the pleasures they have so often envied. What will hold their hand back then? Religious doctrines? Faith is seldom that firm. A purely moral motive for justice? Perhaps in individual cases. But in the great majority it will be only the concern for their good name, their civil honor, which matters a great deal even to a person of modest standing. It will be the obvious danger of being cast out forever, by such a deed, from the great Masonic lodge of honest people. These people follow the law of integrity, and by it they have divided up property among themselves all over the earth and manage it. It will be the danger of being, because of a single dishonest act, a pariah of civil society for life, someone whom no one trusts any more, whose company everyone shuns, and for whom all advancement is therefore cut off. In a word, that is: "A fellow who has stolen"—and the proverb applies to such a person: "Whoever steals once is a thief for life."
These, then, are the guardians of public integrity. Anyone who has lived and kept their eyes open will admit that by far the greatest part of the honesty in human dealings is owed to them alone. There is also no shortage of people who hope to escape even their watchfulness. They regard justice and honesty only as a signboard, a flag, under whose protection one carries out one's privateering raids with all the better success. So we should not flare up at once in holy zeal and get angry when a moralist raises the question whether all honesty and justice might be, at bottom, merely conventional. We should not do so when this moralist then follows the principle further and tries to trace all the rest of morality back to more remote, indirect, but in the end still egoistic reasons, as Holbach, Helvetius, d'Alembert and others of their time have shrewdly tried to do. For the greater part of just actions this is in fact true and correct, as I have shown above. There is no doubt that it is also true of a considerable part of acts of love of humanity. They often come from showing off. Very often they come from belief in a future retribution, which would even be repaid squared, or indeed cubed. They also allow other egoistic reasons. But it is just as certain that there are acts of selfless love of humanity and of wholly voluntary justice. Proofs of the latter, if I am to appeal not to facts of consciousness but only to facts of experience, are the isolated but undoubted cases in which not only the danger of legal prosecution but also that of discovery, and even of any suspicion, was entirely ruled out, and yet even a poor person gave a rich person what was theirs. For example: a lost-and-found item brought back to its owner; something deposited by a third party who had already died, brought to the owner; a deposit made in secret with a poor man by a fugitive from the country, faithfully kept and returned. Cases like these do exist, without doubt. But the surprise, the emotion and the respect with which we receive them clearly show that they belong among unexpected things, among rare exceptions. There really are truly honest people, just as there really is four-leaf clover. But Hamlet speaks without exaggeration when he says: To be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man pick’d out of ten thousand.15 Against the objection that religious doctrines lay at the bottom of the actions mentioned above, and so a regard for punishment and reward in another world, one could also point to cases in which those who performed them held no religious belief at all. That is not nearly as rare as publicly admitting it.
Against the skeptical view, people first appeal to conscience. But doubts are raised against its natural origin too. At least there is also a counterfeit conscience (conscientia spuria), which is often mistaken for it. The remorse and anxiety that many a person feels about what they have done is often, at bottom, nothing other than fear of what may happen to them for it. Breaking external, arbitrary, even absurd rules torments many a person with inner reproaches, just in the manner of conscience. For example, it weighs heavily on the heart of many an overly pious Jew that, although it says in the second book of Moses, Kap. 35, 3, "You shall kindle no fire on the Sabbath day in any of your dwellings," he has smoked a pipe at home on Saturday. Many a nobleman or officer is gnawed by a secret self-reproach that on some occasion they did not properly follow the laws of the fools' code that people call chivalrous honor. This goes so far that many a member of this class, when put in the impossible position of keeping a given word of honor, or even of satisfying the said code in quarrels, will shoot themselves dead. (I have witnessed both.) On the other hand, the same person will break their word any day with a light heart, as long as the shibboleth "honor" was not attached to it. In general, every inconsistency, every thoughtless act, every action against our resolutions, principles or convictions, of whatever kind, and even every indiscretion, every mistake, every blunder, afterward nags at us quietly and leaves a sting in the heart. Many a person would be astonished to see what their conscience, which seems quite impressive to them, is really made of: perhaps 1/5 fear of other people, 1/5 superstitious fear of the gods, 1/5 prejudice, 1/5 vanity and 1/5 habit. So at bottom they are no better than the Englishman who said outright: I cannot afford to keep a conscience (keeping a conscience is too expensive for me). Religious people of every faith very often mean by conscience nothing other than the doctrines and rules of their religion, and the self-examination carried out in relation to them. The expressions coercion of conscience and freedom of conscience are indeed taken in this sense too. The theologians, scholastics and casuists of the middle and later periods took it the same way: everything a person knew of the church's rules and regulations, together with the intention to believe and follow them, made up their conscience. Accordingly there was a doubting conscience, an opining conscience, an erring conscience, and the like, and to set these right people kept a counselor for matters of conscience. How little the concept of conscience, like other concepts, is fixed by its object itself, how differently different people have grasped it, and how shaky and uncertain it appears in the writers, one can see in brief from Stäudlin's "History of the Doctrine of Conscience." None of this is suited to vouch for the reality of the concept, and so it has prompted the question whether there really is a proper, innate conscience at all. In §. 10, in the discussion of freedom, I was already led to state my concept of conscience briefly, and I will come back to it further below.
None of these skeptical doubts, taken together, is enough to deny that any genuine morality exists. But they do lower our expectations of the moral disposition in human beings, and so of the natural foundation of ethics. So much that is credited to it demonstrably comes from other incentives. And looking at the moral corruption of the world proves well enough that the incentive toward the good cannot be very powerful, especially because it often does not work even where the motives opposing it are not strong. Even so, the individual difference between characters remains fully valid here. Meanwhile, our recognition of that moral corruption is made harder, because its expressions are held back and hidden by the legal order, by the necessity of honor, and even by politeness. Finally, there is this as well. In education, people think they promote the morality of their pupils by presenting integrity and virtue to them as the maxims generally followed in the world. Then experience later teaches them otherwise, often to their great harm. The discovery that their teachers in youth were the first to deceive them can then affect their own morality more harmfully than if those teachers had set them the first example of frankness and honesty themselves, and had said openly: "The world lies in wickedness. People are not as they should be. But don't let that mislead you; be better yourself." All this, as I said, makes it harder for us to recognize the real immorality of the human race. The state is the masterpiece of everyone's egoism, an egoism that understands itself, is rational and has been added up. It has put the protection of everyone's rights into the hands of a power that is infinitely superior to the strength of any individual, and that forces each person to respect the rights of all others. Then the boundless egoism of almost everyone, the malice of many, the cruelty of some cannot show itself. Compulsion has tamed everyone. The illusion that results is so great that, in individual cases where state power cannot protect or is evaded, we see people's insatiable greed, base lust for money, deeply hidden falseness and treacherous malice come into view. Then we often shrink back and raise a hue and cry, thinking we have run into a monster never seen before. But without the compulsion of the laws and the necessity of civil honor, such events would be entirely everyday matters. One must read crime stories and descriptions of anarchic conditions to recognize what a human being really is in moral terms. These thousands who crowd past one another before our eyes in peaceful dealings should be regarded as so many tigers and wolves whose bite is secured by a strong muzzle. So when we imagine state power once abolished, that is, that muzzle thrown off, every thoughtful person recoils from the spectacle that would then be expected. In doing so, they show how little effect they really credit to religion, to conscience, or to the natural foundation of morality, whatever it may be. But precisely then, facing those immoral powers set free, the true moral incentive in human beings would also show its effectiveness uncovered. So it could be recognized most easily. At the same time the unbelievably great moral difference between characters would come out unveiled, and would be found just as great as the intellectual difference between minds. That certainly says a lot.
Someone may perhaps want to object to me that ethics is not concerned with how people actually act. They may say it is the science that states how they ought to act. But this is exactly the principle I deny. In the critical part of this essay I showed well enough that the concept of ought, the imperative form of ethics, is valid only in theological morality and loses all sense and meaning outside it. I, by contrast, set ethics the aim of interpreting and explaining the human way of acting, which differs enormously in moral terms, and of tracing it back to its final ground. So, to find the foundation of ethics, no other way remains but the empirical one: to investigate whether there are any actions at all to which we must grant genuine moral worth. These will be the actions of voluntary justice, pure love of humanity and true nobility of character. These are then to be regarded as a given phenomenon. We have to explain it correctly, that is, trace it back to its true grounds, and so show the incentive, in any case a special one, that moves human beings to actions of this kind, which is specifically different from every other kind. This incentive, together with receptiveness to it, will be the final ground of morality, and knowledge of it will be the foundation of morals. That is the modest path along which I point ethics. Whoever finds it not grand, professorial and academic enough, because it is no construction a priori and contains no absolute legislation for all rational beings in the abstract, may go back to the categorical imperatives, to the shibboleth of "human dignity," to the hollow phrases, fancies and soap bubbles of the schools, to principles that experience mocks at every step and about which, outside the lecture halls, no one knows anything or has ever felt anything. By contrast, experience stands beside the foundation of morals that emerges on my path, and gives its quiet testimony for it every day and every hour.
14 See "The World as Will and Representation," Bd. 1, §. 62, S. 396 ff., and Bd. 2, Kap. 47, S. 682.
15 By the course of this world, being honest means being one person picked out of ten thousand.
About this section
Section 13 is part of On the Basis of Morality by Arthur Schopenhauer. This page sets the German original beside 2 direct-source translations, so any line can be checked against the source. It is section 14 of 24 in the work, which is kept in the European tradition.
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