Section 17
Original German
Die Tugend der Gerechtigkeit.
Bei näherer Betrachtung des oben als ethisches Urphänomen nachgewiesenen Vorgangs des Mitleids ist auf den ersten Blick ersichtlich, daß es zwei deutlich getrennte Grade giebt, in welchen das Leiden eines Andern unmittelbar mein Motiv werden, d. h. mich zum Thun oder Lassen bestimmen kann: nämlich zuerst nur in dem Grade, daß es, egoistischen oder boshaften Motiven entgegenwirkend, mich abhält, dem Andern ein Leiden zu verursachen, also herbeizuführen was noch nicht ist, selbst Ursache fremder Schmerzen zu werden; sodann aber in dem höhern Grade, wo das Mitleid, positiv wirkend, mich zu thätiger Hülfe antreibt. Die Trennung zwischen sogenannten Rechts- und Tugend-Pflichten, richtiger zwischen Gerechtigkeit und Menschenliebe, welche bei Kant so gezwungen herauskam, ergiebt sich hier ganz und gar von selbst, und bezeugt dadurch die Richtigkeit des Princips: es ist die natürliche, unverkennbare und scharfe Gränze zwischen dem Negativen und Positiven, zwischen Nichtverletzen und Helfen. Die bisherige Benennung, Rechts- und Tugend-Pflichten, letztere auch Liebespflichten, unvollkommene Pflichten genannt, hat zuvörderst den Fehler, daß sie das Genus der Species koordinirt: denn die Gerechtigkeit ist auch eine Tugend. Sodann liegt derselben die viel zu weite Ausdehnung des Begriffes Pflicht zum Grunde, den ich weiter unten in seine wahren Schranken zurückführen werde. An die Stelle obiger zwei Pflichten setze ich daher zwei Tugenden, die der Gerechtigkeit und die der Menschenliebe, welche ich Kardinaltugenden nenne, weil aus ihnen alle übrigen praktisch hervorgehen und theoretisch sich ableiten lassen. Beide wurzeln in dem natürlichen Mitleid. Dieses Mitleid selbst aber ist eine unleugbare Thatsache des menschlichen Bewußtseyns, ist diesem wesentlich eigen, beruht nicht auf Voraussetzungen, Begriffen, Religionen, Dogmen, Mythen, Erziehung und Bildung; sondern ist ursprünglich und unmittelbar, liegt in der menschlichen Natur selbst, hält eben deshalb unter allen Verhältnissen Stich, und zeigt sich in allen Ländern und Zeiten; daher an dasselbe, als an etwas in jedem Menschen nothwendig Vorhandenes, überall zuversichtlich appellirt wird, und nirgends gehört es zu den „fremden Göttern“. Hingegen nennt man Den, dem es zu mangeln scheint, einen Unmenschen; wie auch „Menschlichkeit“ oft als Synonym von Mitleid gebraucht wird.
Der erste Grad der Wirksamkeit dieser ächten und natürlichen moralischen Triebfeder ist also nur negativ. Ursprünglich sind wir Alle zur Ungerechtigkeit und Gewalt geneigt, weil unser Bedürfniß, unsere Begierde, unser Zorn und Haß unmittelbar ins Bewußtseyn treten und daher das Jus primi occupantis haben; hingegen die fremden Leiden, welche unsere Ungerechtigkeit und Gewalt verursacht, nur auf dem sekundären Wege der Vorstellung und erst durch die Erfahrung, also mittelbar ins Bewußtseyn kommen: daher sagt Seneka: Ad neminem ante bona mens venit, quam mala (Ep. 50). Der erste Grad der Wirkung des Mitleids ist also, daß es den von mir selbst, in Folge der mir einwohnenden antimoralischen Potenzen, Andern zu verursachenden Leiden hemmend entgegentritt, mir „Halt!“ zuruft und sich als eine Schutzwehr vor den Andern stellt, die ihn vor der Verletzung bewahrt, zu welcher außerdem mein Egoismus, oder Bosheit, mich treiben würde. Dergestalt entspringt aus diesem ersten Grade des Mitleids die Maxime neminem laede, d. i. der Grundsatz der Gerechtigkeit, welche Tugend ihren lautern, rein moralischen, von aller Beimischung freien Ursprung allein hier hat und nirgends außerdem haben kann, weil sie sonst auf Egoismus beruhen müßte. Ist mein Gemüth bis zu jenem Grade für das Mitleid empfänglich; so wird dasselbe mich zurückhalten, wo und wann ich, um meine Zwecke zu erreichen, fremdes Leiden als Mittel gebrauchen möchte; gleichviel ob dieses Leiden ein augenblicklich, oder später eintretendes, ein direktes, oder indirektes, durch Zwischenglieder vermitteltes sei. Folglich werde ich dann so wenig das Eigenthum, als die Person des Andern angreifen, ihm so wenig geistige, als körperliche Leiden verursachen, also nicht nur mich jeder physischen Verletzung enthalten; sondern auch eben so wenig auf geistigem Wege ihm Schmerz bereiten, durch Kränkung, Aengstigung, Aerger, oder Verläumdung. Das selbe Mitleid wird mich abhalten, die Befriedigung meiner Lüste auf Kosten des Lebensglückes weiblicher Individuen zu suchen, oder das Weib eines Andern zu verführen, oder auch Jünglinge moralisch und physisch zu verderben, durch Verleitung zur Päderastie. Jedoch ist keineswegs erforderlich, daß in jedem einzelnen Fall das Mitleid wirklich erregt werde; wo es auch oft zu spät käme: sondern aus der Ein für alle Mal erlangten Kenntniß von dem Leiden, welches jede ungerechte Handlung nothwendig über Andere bringt, und welches durch das Gefühl des Unrechterduldens, d. h. der fremden Uebermacht, geschärft wird, geht in edeln Gemüthern die Maxime neminem laede hervor, und die vernünftige Ueberlegung erhebt sie zu dem Ein für alle Mal gefaßten festen Vorsatz, die Rechte eines Jeden zu achten, sich keinen Eingriff in dieselben zu erlauben, sich von dem Selbstvorwurf, die Ursache fremder Leiden zu seyn, frei zu erhalten und demnach nicht die Lasten und Leiden des Lebens, welche die Umstände Jedem zuführen, durch Gewalt oder List auf Andere zu wälzen, sondern sein beschiedenes Theil selbst zu tragen, um nicht das eines Andern zu verdoppeln. Denn obwohl Grundsätze und abstrakte Erkenntniß überhaupt keineswegs die Urquelle, oder erste Grundlage der Moralität sind; so sind sie doch zu einem moralischen Lebenswandel unentbehrlich, als das Behältniß, das Réservoir, in welchem die aus der Quelle aller Moralität, als welche nicht in jedem Augenblicke fließt, entsprungene Gesinnung aufbewahrt wird, um, wenn der Fall der Anwendung kommt, durch Ableitungskanäle dahin zu fließen. Es verhält sich also im Moralischen wie im Physiologischen, wo z. B. die Gallenblase, als Réservoir des Produkts der Leber, nothwendig ist, und in vielen ähnlichen Fällen. Ohne fest gefaßte Grundsätze würden wir den antimoralischen Triebfedern, wenn sie durch äußere Eindrücke zu Affekten erregt sind, unwiderstehlich Preis gegeben seyn. Das Festhalten und Befolgen der Grundsätze, den ihnen entgegen wirkenden Motiven zum Trotz, ist Selbstbeherrschung. Hier liegt auch die Ursache, warum die Weiber, als welche, wegen der Schwäche ihrer Vernunft, allgemeine Grundsätze zu verstehen, festzuhalten und zur Richtschnur zu nehmen, weit weniger als die Männer fähig sind, in der Tugend der Gerechtigkeit, also auch Redlichkeit und Gewissenhaftigkeit, diesen in der Regel nachstehen; daher Ungerechtigkeit und Falschheit ihre häufigsten Laster sind und Lügen ihr eigentliches Element: hingegen übertreffen sie die Männer in der Tugend der Menschenliebe: denn zu dieser ist der Anlaß meistens anschaulich und redet daher unmittelbar zum Mitleid, für welches die Weiber entschieden leichter empfänglich sind. Aber nur das Anschauliche, Gegenwärtige, unmittelbar Reale hat wahre Existenz für sie: das nur mittelst der Begriffe erkennbare Entfernte, Abwesende, Vergangene, Zukünftige ist ihnen nicht wohl faßlich. Also ist auch hier Kompensation: Gerechtigkeit ist mehr die männliche, Menschenliebe mehr die weibliche Tugend. Der Gedanke, Weiber das Richteramt verwalten zu sehen, erregt Lachen; aber die barmherzigen Schwestern übertreffen sogar die barmherzigen Brüder. Nun aber gar das Thier ist, da ihm die abstrakte oder Vernunft-Erkenntniß gänzlich fehlt, durchaus keiner Vorsätze, geschweige Grundsätze und mithin keiner Selbstbeherrschung fähig, sondern dem Eindruck und Affekt wehrlos hingegeben. Daher eben hat es keine bewußte Moralität; wiewohl die Species große Unterschiede der Bosheit und Güte des Charakters zeigen, und in den obersten Geschlechtern selbst die Individuen. — Dem Gesagten zufolge wirkt, in den einzelnen Handlungen des Gerechten, das Mitleid nur noch indirekt, mittelst der Grundsätze, und nicht sowohl actu als potentiâ; etwan so, wie in der Statik die durch größere Länge des einen Waagebalkens bewirkte größere Geschwindigkeit, vermöge welcher die kleinere Masse der größern das Gleichgewicht hält, im Zustand der Ruhe nur potentiâ und doch völlig so gut wie actu wirkt. Jedoch bleibt dabei das Mitleid stets bereit, auch actu hervorzutreten: daher, wenn etwan, in einzelnen Fällen, die erwählte Maxime der Gerechtigkeit wankt, zur Unterstützung derselben und zur Belebung der gerechten Vorsätze, kein Motiv (die egoistischen bei Seite gesetzt) wirksamer ist, als das aus der Urquelle selbst, dem Mitleid, geschöpfte. Dies gilt nicht etwan bloß wo es die Verletzung der Person, sondern auch wo es die des Eigenthums betrifft, z. B. wenn Jemand eine gefundene Sache von Werth zu behalten Lust spürt; so wird — mit Ausschluß aller Klugheits- und aller Religions-Motive dagegen — nichts ihn so leicht auf die Bahn der Gerechtigkeit zurückbringen, wie die Vorstellung der Sorge, des Herzeleids und der Wehklage des Verlierers. Im Gefühl dieser Wahrheit geschieht es oft, daß dem öffentlichen Aufruf zur Wiederbringung verlorenen Geldes die Versicherung hinzugefügt wird, der Verlierer sei ein armer Mensch, ein Dienstbote u. dgl.
Diese Betrachtungen werden es hoffentlich deutlich machen, daß, so wenig es auf den ersten Blick scheinen mag, allerdings auch die Gerechtigkeit, als ächte, freie Tugend, ihren Ursprung im Mitleid hat. Wem dennoch dieser Boden zu dürftig scheinen möchte, als daß jene große, recht eigentliche Kardinaltugend bloß in ihm wurzeln könnte, der erinnere sich aus dem Obigen, wie gering das Maaß der ächten, freiwilligen, uneigennützigen und ungeschminkten Gerechtigkeit ist, die sich unter Menschen findet; wie diese immer nur als überraschende Ausnahme vorkommt und zu ihrer Afterart, der auf bloßer Klugheit beruhenden und überall laut angekündigten Gerechtigkeit, sich, der Qualität und Quantität nach, verhält wie Gold zu Kupfer. Ich möchte diese letztere δικαιοσυνη πανδημος, die andere οὐρανια nennen; da ja sie es ist, welche, nach Hesiodus, im eisernen Zeitalter die Erde verläßt, um bei den himmlischen Göttern zu wohnen. Für diese seltene und auf Erden stets nur exotische Pflanze ist die nachgewiesene Wurzel stark genug.
Die Ungerechtigkeit, oder das Unrecht, besteht demnach alle Mal in der Verletzung eines Andern. Daher ist der Begriff des Unrechts ein positiver und dem des Rechts vorhergängig, als welcher der negative ist und bloß die Handlungen bezeichnet, welche man ausüben kann, ohne Andere zu verletzen, d. h. ohne Unrecht zu thun. Daß zu diesen auch alle Handlungen gehören, welche allein den Zweck haben, versuchtes Unrecht abzuwehren, ist leicht abzusehen. Denn keine Theilnahme am Andern, kein Mitleid mit ihm kann mich auffodern, mich von ihm verletzen zu lassen, d. h. Unrecht zu leiden. Daß der Begriff des Rechts der negative sei, im Gegensatz des Unrechts, als des positiven, giebt sich auch zu erkennen in der ersten Erklärung, welche der Vater der philosophischen Rechtslehre, Hugo Grotius, am Eingange seines Werkes, von jenem Begriffe aufstellt: Jus hic nihil aliud, quam quod justum est significat, idque negante magis sensu, quam ajente, ut jus sit, quod injustum non est (De jure belli et pacis, L. I, c. 1, §. 3). Die Negativität der Gerechtigkeit bewährt sich, dem Anschein entgegen, selbst in der trivialen Definition: „Jedem das Seinige geben.“ Ist es das Seinige, braucht man es ihm nicht zu geben: bedeutet also: „Keinem das Seinige nehmen.“ — Weil die Forderung der Gerechtigkeit bloß negativ ist, läßt sie sich erzwingen: denn das neminem laede kann von Allen zugleich geübt werden. Die Zwangsanstalt hiezu ist der Staat, dessen alleiniger Zweck ist, die Einzelnen vor einander und das Ganze vor äußeren Feinden zu schützen. Einige deutsche Philosophaster dieses feilen Zeitalters möchten ihn verdrehen zu einer Moralitäts-Erziehungs- und Erbauungs-Anstalt: wobei im Hintergrunde der Jesuitische Zweck lauert, die persönliche Freiheit und individuelle Entwickelung des Einzelnen aufzuheben, um ihn zum bloßen Rade einer Chinesischen Staats- und Religions-Maschine zu machen. Dies aber ist der Weg, auf welchem man weiland zu Inquisitionen, Autos de Fé und Religionskriegen gelangt ist: Friedrichs des Großen Wort, „In meinem Lande soll Jeder seine Seligkeit nach seiner eigenen Façon besorgen können“, besagte, daß er ihn nie betreten wolle. Hingegen sehen wir auch jetzt noch überall (mit mehr scheinbarer, als wirklicher Ausnahme Nordamerikas) den Staat auch die Sorge für das metaphysische Bedürfniß seiner Mitglieder übernehmen. Die Regierungen scheinen zu ihrem Princip den Satz des Quintus Curtius gewählt zu haben: Nulla res efficacius multitudinem regit, quam superstitio: alioquin impotens, saeva, mutabilis; ubi vana religione capta est, melius vatibus, quam ducibus suis paret.
Die Begriffe Unrecht und Recht, als gleichbedeutend mit Verletzung und Nichtverletzung, zu welcher letztern auch das Abwehren der Verletzung gehört, sind offenbar unabhängig von aller positiven Gesetzgebung und dieser vorhergehend: also giebt es ein rein ethisches Recht, oder Naturrecht, und eine reine, d. h. von aller positiven Satzung unabhängige Rechtslehre. Die Grundsätze derselben haben zwar insofern einen empirischen Ursprung, als sie auf Anlaß des Begriffs der Verletzung entstehen, an sich selbst aber beruhen sie auf dem reinen Verstande, welcher a priori das Princip an die Hand giebt: causa causae est causa effectus; welches hier besagt, daß von dem, was ich thun muß, um die Verletzung eines Andern von mir abzuwehren, er selbst die Ursache ist, und nicht ich; also ich mich allen Beeinträchtigungen von seiner Seite widersetzen kann, ohne ihm Unrecht zu thun. Es ist gleichsam ein moralisches Reperkussionsgesetz. Also aus der Verbindung des empirischen Begriffs der Verletzung mit jener Regel, die der reine Verstand an die Hand giebt, entstehen die Grundbegriffe von Unrecht und Recht, die Jeder a priori faßt und auf Anlaß der Erfahrung sogleich anwendet. Den dieses leugnenden Empiriker darf man, da bei ihm allein Erfahrung gilt, nur auf die Wilden hinweisen, die alle ganz richtig, oft auch fein und genau, Unrecht und Recht unterscheiden; welches sehr in die Augen fällt bei ihrem Tauschhandel und andern Uebereinkünften mit der Mannschaft Europäischer Schiffe, und bei ihren Besuchen auf diesen. Sie sind dreist und zuversichtlich, wo sie Recht haben, hingegen ängstlich, wenn das Recht nicht auf ihrer Seite ist. Bei Streitigkeiten lassen sie sich eine rechtliche Ausgleichung gefallen, hingegen reizt ungerechtes Verfahren sie zum Kriege. — Die Rechtslehre ist ein Theil der Moral, welcher die Handlungen feststellt, die man nicht ausüben darf, wenn man nicht Andere verletzen, d. h. Unrecht begehen will. Die Moral hat also hiebei den aktiven Theil im Auge. Die Gesetzgebung aber nimmt dieses Kapitel der Moral, um es in Rücksicht auf die passive Seite, also umgekehrt, zu gebrauchen und die selben Handlungen zu betrachten als solche, die Keiner, da ihm kein Unrecht widerfahren soll, zu leiden braucht. Gegen diese Handlungen errichtet nun der Staat das Bollwerk der Gesetze, als positives Recht. Seine Absicht ist, daß Keiner Unrecht leide: die Absicht der moralischen Rechtslehre hingegen, daß keiner Unrecht thue.18
Bei jeder ungerechten Handlung ist das Unrecht der Qualität nach das selbe, nämlich Verletzung eines Andern, es sei an seiner Person, seiner Freiheit, seinem Eigenthum, seiner Ehre. Aber der Quantität nach kann es sehr verschieden seyn. Diese Verschiedenheit der Größe des Unrechts scheint von den Moralisten noch nicht gehörig untersucht zu seyn, wird jedoch im wirklichen Leben überall anerkannt, indem die Größe des Tadels, den man darüber ergehen läßt, ihr entspricht. Gleichermaaßen verhält es sich mit der Gerechtigkeit der Handlungen. Um dies zu erläutern: z. B. wer, dem Hungertode nahe, ein Brot stiehlt, begeht ein Unrecht: aber wie klein ist seine Ungerechtigkeit gegen die eines Reichen, der auf irgend eine Weise einen Armen um sein letztes Eigenthum bringt. Der Reiche, welcher seinen Tagelöhner bezahlt, handelt gerecht: aber wie klein ist diese Gerechtigkeit gegen die eines Armen, der eine gefundene Goldbörse dem Reichen freiwillig zurückbringt. Das Maaß dieser so bedeutenden Verschiedenheit in der Quantität der Gerechtigkeit und Ungerechtigkeit (bei stets gleicher Qualität) ist aber kein direktes und absolutes, wie das auf dem Maaßstabe, sondern ein mittelbares und relatives, wie das der Sinus und Tangenten. Ich stelle dazu folgende Formel auf: die Größe der Ungerechtigkeit meiner Handlung ist gleich der Größe des Uebels, welches ich einem Andern dadurch zufüge, dividirt durch die Größe des Vortheils, den ich selbst dadurch erlange: — und die Größe der Gerechtigkeit meiner Handlung ist gleich der Größe des Vortheils, den mir die Verletzung des Andern bringen würde, dividirt durch die Größe des Schadens, den er dadurch erleiden würde. — Nun aber giebt es außerdem noch eine doppelte Ungerechtigkeit, die von jeder einfachen, sei diese noch so groß, specifisch verschieden ist, welches sich dadurch kund giebt, daß die Größe der Indignation des unbetheiligten Zeugen, welche stets der Größe der Ungerechtigkeit proportional ausfällt, bei der doppelten allein den höchsten Grad erreicht, und diese verabscheut als etwas Empörendes und Himmelschreiendes, als eine Unthat, ein ἄγος, bei welchem gleichsam die Götter ihr Antlitz verhüllen. Diese doppelte Ungerechtigkeit hat Statt, wo Jemand ausdrücklich die Verpflichtung übernommen hat, einen Andern in einer bestimmten Hinsicht zu schützen, folglich die Nichterfüllung dieser Verpflichtung schon Verletzung des Andern, mithin Unrecht wäre; er nun aber noch überdies jenen Andern, eben darin, wo er ihn schützen sollte, selbst angreift und verletzt. Dies ist z. B. der Fall, wo der bestellte Wächter, oder Geleitsmann, zum Mörder, der betraute Hüter zum Dieb wird, der Vormund die Mündel um ihr Eigenthum bringt, der Advokat prävaricirt, der Richter sich bestechen läßt, der um Rath Gebetene dem Frager absichtlich einen verderblichen Rath ertheilt; — welches Alles zusammen unter dem Begriff des Verraths gedacht wird, welcher der Abscheu der Welt ist: diesem gemäß setzt auch Dante die Verräther in den tiefuntersten Grund der Hölle, wo der Satan selbst sich aufhält (Inf., XI, 61—66).
Da nun hier der Begriff der Verpflichtung zur Sprache gekommen, ist es der Ort, den in der Ethik, wie im Leben, so häufig angewandten Begriff der Pflicht, dem jedoch eine zu große Ausdehnung gegeben wird, festzustellen. Wir haben gefunden, daß das Unrecht allemal in der Verletzung eines Andern besteht, sei es an seiner Person, seiner Freiheit, seinem Eigenthum, oder seiner Ehre. Hieraus scheint zu folgen, daß jedes Unrecht ein positiver Angriff, eine That seyn müsse. Allein es giebt Handlungen, deren bloße Unterlassung ein Unrecht ist: solche Handlungen heißen Pflichten. Dieses ist die wahre philosophische Definition des Begriffs der Pflicht, welcher hingegen alle Eigenthümlichkeit einbüßt und dadurch verloren geht, wenn man, wie in der bisherigen Moral, jede lobenswerthe Handlungsweise Pflicht nennen will, wobei man vergißt, daß was Pflicht ist auch Schuldigkeit seyn muß. Pflicht, το δεον, le devoir, duty, ist also eine Handlung, durch deren bloße Unterlassung man einen Andern verletzt, d. h. Unrecht begeht. Offenbar kann dies nur dadurch der Fall seyn, daß der Unterlasser sich zu einer solchen Handlung anheischig gemacht, d. h. eben verpflichtet hat. Demnach beruhen alle Pflichten auf eingegangener Verpflichtung. Diese ist in der Regel eine ausdrückliche, gegenseitige Uebereinkunft, wie z. B. zwischen Fürst und Volk, Regierung und Beamten, Herrn und Diener, Advokat und Klienten, Arzt und Kranken, überhaupt zwischen einem Jeden, der eine Leistung irgend einer Art übernommen hat, und seinem Besteller, im weitesten Sinne des Worts. Darum giebt jede Pflicht ein Recht: weil Keiner sich ohne ein Motiv, d. h. hier, ohne irgend einen Vortheil für sich, verpflichten kann. Nur eine Verpflichtung ist mir bekannt, die nicht mittelst einer Uebereinkunft, sondern unmittelbar durch eine bloße Handlung übernommen wird; weil Der, gegen den man sie hat, noch nicht dawar, als man sie übernahm: es ist die der Eltern gegen ihre Kinder. Wer ein Kind in die Welt setzt, hat die Pflicht es zu erhalten, bis es sich selbst zu erhalten fähig ist: und sollte diese Zeit, wie bei einem Blinden, Krüppel, Kretinen u. dgl. nie eintreten, so hört auch die Pflicht nie auf. Denn durch das bloße Nichtleisten der Hülfe, also eine Unterlassung, würde er sein Kind verletzen, ja, dem Untergange zuführen. Die moralische Pflicht der Kinder gegen die Eltern ist nicht so unmittelbar und entschieden. Sie beruht darauf, daß, weil jede Pflicht ein Recht giebt, auch die Eltern eines gegen die Kinder haben müssen, welches bei diesen die Pflicht des Gehorsams begründet, die aber nachmals, mit dem Recht, aus welchem sie entstanden ist, auch aufhört. An ihre Stelle wird alsdann Dankbarkeit treten für Das, was die Eltern mehr gethan, als strenge ihre Pflicht war. Jedoch, ein so häßliches, oft selbst empörendes Laster auch der Undank ist; so ist Dankbarkeit doch nicht Pflicht zu nennen: weil ihr Ausbleiben keine Verletzung des Andern, also kein Unrecht ist. Außerdem müßte der Wohlthäter vermeint haben, stillschweigend einen Handel abzuschließen. — Allenfalls könnte man als unmittelbar durch eine Handlung entstehende Verpflichtung den Ersatz für angerichteten Schaden geltend machen. Jedoch ist dieser, als Aufhebung der Folgen einer ungerechten Handlung, eine bloße Bemühung sie auszulöschen, etwas rein Negatives, das darauf beruht, daß die Handlung selbst hätte unterbleiben sollen. — Noch sei hier bemerkt, daß die Billigkeit der Feind der Gerechtigkeit ist und ihr oft gröblich zusetzt: daher man ihr nicht zu viel einräumen soll. Der Deutsche ist ein Freund der Billigkeit, der Engländer hält es mit der Gerechtigkeit.
Das Gesetz der Motivation ist eben so streng, wie das der physischen Kausalität, führt also einen eben so unwiderstehlichen Zwang mit sich. Dem entsprechend giebt es zur Ausübung des Unrechts zwei Wege, den der Gewalt und den der List. Wie ich durch Gewalt einen Andern tödten, oder berauben, oder mir zu gehorchen zwingen kann; so kann ich alles dieses auch durch List ausführen, indem ich seinem Intellekt falsche Motive vorschiebe, in Folge welcher er thun muß, was er außerdem nicht thun würde. Dies geschieht mittelst der Lüge; deren Unrechtmäßigkeit allein hierauf beruht, ihr also nur anhängt, sofern sie ein Werkzeug der List, d. h. des Zwanges mittelst der Motivation, ist. Dies aber ist sie in der Regel. Denn zunächst kann mein Lügen selbst nicht ohne Motiv geschehen: dies Motiv aber wird, mit den seltensten Ausnahmen, ein ungerechtes, nämlich die Absicht seyn, Andere, über die ich keine Gewalt habe, nach meinem Willen zu leiten, d. h. sie mittelst der Motivation zu zwingen. Diese Absicht liegt sogar auch der bloß windbeutelnden Lüge zum Grunde, indem wer sie braucht sich dadurch bei Andern in höheres Ansehen, als ihm zusteht, zu setzen sucht. — Die Verbindlichkeit des Versprechens und des Vertrages beruht darauf, daß sie, wenn nicht erfüllt, die feierlichste Lüge sind, deren Absicht, moralischen Zwang über Andere auszuüben, hier um so evidenter ist, als das Motiv der Lüge, die verlangte Leistung des Gegenparts, ausdrücklich ausgesprochen ist. Das Verächtliche des Betrugs kommt daher, daß er durch Gleißnerei seinen Mann entwaffnet, ehe er ihn angreift. Der Verrath ist sein Gipfel und wird, weil er in die Kategorie der doppelten Ungerechtigkeit gehört, tief verabscheut. Aber wie ich, ohne Unrecht, also mit Recht, Gewalt durch Gewalt vertreiben kann; so kann ich, wo mir die Gewalt abgeht, oder es mir bequemer scheint, es auch durch List. Ich habe also in den Fällen, wo ich ein Recht zur Gewalt habe, es auch zur Lüge: so z. B. gegen Räuber und unberechtigte Gewältiger jeder Art, die ich demnach durch List in eine Falle locke. Darum bindet ein gewaltsam abgezwungenes Versprechen nicht. — Aber das Recht zur Lüge geht in der That noch weiter: es tritt ein bei jeder völlig unbefugten Frage, welche meine persönlichen, oder meine Geschäftsangelegenheiten betrifft, mithin vorwitzig ist, und deren Beantwortung nicht nur, sondern schon deren bloße Zurückweisung durch „ich will’s nicht sagen“, als Verdacht erweckend, mich in Gefahr bringen würde. Hier ist die Lüge die Nothwehr gegen unbefugte Neugier, deren Motiv meistens kein wohlwollendes ist. Denn, wie ich das Recht habe, dem vorausgesetzten bösen Willen Anderer und der demnach präsumirten physischen Gewalt physischen Widerstand, auf Gefahr des Beeinträchtigers, zum voraus entgegenzustellen und also, als Präventivmaaßregel, meine Gartenmauer mit scharfen Spitzen zu verwahren, Nachts auf meinem Hofe böse Hunde loszulassen, ja, nach Umständen, selbst Fußangeln und Selbstschüsse zu stellen, deren schlimme Folgen der Eindringer sich selber zuzuschreiben hat; so habe ich auch das Recht, dasjenige auf alle Weise geheim zu halten, dessen Kenntniß mich dem Angriff Anderer bloßstellen würde, und habe auch Ursache dazu, weil ich auch hier den bösen Willen Anderer als sehr leicht möglich annehmen und die Vorkehrungen dagegen zum voraus treffen muß. Daher sagt Ariosto:
Quantunque il simular sia le più volteRipreso, e dia di mala mente indici,Si trova pure in molte cose e molteAvere fatti evidenti benefici,E danni e biasmi e morti avere tolte:Che non conversiam’ sempre con gli amici,In questa assai più oscura che serenaVita mortal, tutta d’invidia piena.19
(Orl. fur., IV, 1.)
Ich darf also, ohne Unrecht, selbst der bloß präsumirten Beeinträchtigung durch List, zum voraus List entgegenstellen, und brauche daher nicht Dem, der unbefugt in meine Privatverhältnisse späht, Rede zu stehen, noch durch die Antwort: „Dies will ich geheim halten“, die Stelle anzuzeigen, wo ein mir gefährliches, ihm vielleicht vortheilhaftes, jedenfalls ihm Macht über mich verleihendes Geheimniß liegt:
Scire volunt secreta domus, atque inde timeri.
Sondern ich bin alsdann befugt, ihn mit einer Lüge abzufertigen, auf seine Gefahr, falls sie ihn in schädlichen Irrthum versetzt. Denn hier ist die Lüge das einzige Mittel, der vorwitzigen und verdächtigen Neugier zu begegnen: ich stehe daher im Fall der Nothwehr. Ask me no questions, and I’ll tell you no lies20, ist hier die richtige Maxime. Nämlich bei den Engländern, denen der Vorwurf der Lüge als die schwerste Beleidigung gilt, und die eben daher wirklich weniger lügen, als die andern Nationen, werden dem entsprechend alle unbefugten, die Verhältnisse des Andern betreffenden Fragen als eine Ungezogenheit angesehen, welche der Ausdruck to ask questions bezeichnet. — Auch verfährt nach dem oben aufgestellten Princip jeder Verständige, selbst wenn er von der strengsten Rechtlichkeit ist. Kehrt er z. B. von einem entlegenen Orte zurück, wo er Geld erhoben hat, und ein unbekannter Reisender gesellt sich zu ihm, frägt, wie gewöhnlich, erst wohin, und dann woher, darauf allmälig auch, was ihn an jenen Ort geführt haben mag; — so wird Jener eine Lüge antworten, um der Gefahr des Raubes vorzubeugen. Wer in dem Hause, in welchem ein Mann, um dessen Tochter er wirbt, wohnt, angetroffen und nach der Ursache seiner unvermutheten Anwesenheit gefragt wird, giebt, wenn er nicht auf den Kopf gefallen ist, unbedenklich eine falsche an. Und so kommen gar viele Fälle vor, in denen jeder Vernünftige, ohne allen Gewissensskrupel, lügt. Diese Ansicht allein beseitigt den schreienden Widerspruch zwischen der Moral, die gelehrt, und der, die täglich, selbst von den Redlichsten und Besten, ausgeübt wird. Jedoch muß dabei die angegebene Einschränkung auf den Fall der Nothwehr streng festgehalten werden; da außerdem diese Lehre abscheulichem Mißbrauche offen stände: denn an sich ist die Lüge ein sehr gefährliches Werkzeug. Aber wie, trotz dem Landfrieden, das Gesetz Jedem erlaubt, Waffen zu tragen und zu gebrauchen, nämlich im Fall der Nothwehr; so gestattet für den selben Fall, aber eben so auch nur für diesen, die Moral den Gebrauch der Lüge. Diesen Fall der Nothwehr gegen Gewalt oder List ausgenommen, ist jede Lüge ein Unrecht; daher die Gerechtigkeit Wahrhaftigkeit gegen Jedermann fordert. Aber gegen die völlig unbedingte, ausnahmslose und im Wesen der Sache liegende Verwerflichkeit der Lüge spricht schon Dies, daß es Fälle giebt, wo lügen sogar Pflicht ist, namentlich für Aerzte; ebenfalls, daß es edelmüthige Lügen giebt, z. B. die des Marquis Posa im Don Carlos, die in der Gerusalemme liberata, II, 22, und überhaupt in allen den Fällen, wo Einer die Schuld des Andern auf sich laden will; endlich daß sogar Jesus Christus ein Mal absichtlich die Unwahrheit gesagt hat (Joh. 7, 8). Demgemäß sagt Campanella, in seinen Poesie filosofiche, madr. 9, geradezu: Bello è il mentir, se a fare gran ben’ si trova.21 Dagegen aber ist die gangbare Lehre von der Nothlüge ein elender Flicken auf dem Kleide einer armsäligen Moral. — Die, auf Kants Veranlassung, in manchen Kompendien gegebenen Ableitungen der Unrechtmäßigkeit der Lüge, aus dem Sprachvermögen des Menschen, sind so platt, kindisch und abgeschmackt, daß man, nur um ihnen Hohn zu sprechen, versucht werden könnte, sich dem Teufel in die Arme zu werfen und mit Talleyrand zu sagen: l’homme a reçu la parole pour pouvoir cacher sa pensée. — Kants bei jeder Gelegenheit zur Schau getragener, unbedingter und gränzenloser Abscheu gegen die Lüge beruht entweder auf Affektation, oder auf Vorurtheil: in dem Kapitel seiner „Tugendlehre“ von der Lüge, schilt er diese zwar mit allen ehrenrührigen Prädikaten, bringt aber gar keinen eigentlichen Grund für ihre Verwerflichkeit bei; welches doch wirksamer gewesen wäre. Deklamiren ist leichter als Beweisen, und Moralisiren leichter als Aufrichtigseyn. Kant hätte besser gethan, jenen speciellen Eifer gegen die Schadenfreude loszulassen: diese, nicht die Lüge, ist das eigentlich teuflische Laster. Denn sie ist das gerade Gegentheil des Mitleids, und ist nichts Anderes, als die ohnmächtige Grausamkeit, welche die Leiden, in denen sie Andere so gern erblickt, selbst herbeizuführen unfähig, dem Zufall dankt, der es statt ihrer that. — Daß, nach dem Princip der ritterlichen Ehre, der Vorwurf der Lüge als so sehr schwer und eigentlich mit dem Blute des Anschuldigers abzuwaschen genommen wird, liegt nicht daran, daß die Lüge unrecht ist, da alsdann die Anschuldigung eines durch Gewalt verübten Unrechts eben so schwer kränken müßte, was bekanntlich nicht der Fall ist; sondern es liegt daran, daß, nach dem Princip der ritterlichen Ehre, eigentlich die Gewalt das Recht begründet: wer nun, um ein Unrecht auszuführen, zur Lüge greift, beweist, daß ihm die Gewalt, oder der zur Anwendung dieser nöthige Muth abgeht. Jede Lüge zeugt von Furcht: das bricht den Stab über ihn.
18 Die ausgeführte Rechtslehre findet man in der „Welt als Wille und Vorstellung“, Bd. 1, §. 62.
19 So sehr auch meistens die Verstellung getadelt wird und von schlechter Absicht zeugt; so hat sie dennoch in gar vielen Dingen augenfällig Gutes gestiftet, indem sie dem Schaden, der Schande und dem Tode vorbeugte: denn nicht immer reden wir mit Freunden, in diesem viel mehr finstern, als heitern, sterblichen Leben, welches von Neide strotzt.
20 Frag’ du mich nicht aus, will ich dich nicht belügen.
21 Schön ist das Lügen, wenn es viel Gutes stiftet.
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 Virtue of Justice.
A closer look at the process of compassion established above as the primal ethical phenomenon reveals at once two clearly distinct degrees in which another person's suffering can become my immediate motive—that is, determine what I do or refrain from doing. In the first, it merely counteracts selfish or malicious motives and keeps me from causing another person suffering: from bringing about what does not yet exist, from becoming the cause of someone else's pain. In the second and higher degree, compassion works positively and moves me to active help. The distinction between so-called duties of right and duties of virtue—or, more accurately, between justice and loving-kindness—which emerged so awkwardly in Kant, arises here entirely of itself, and thereby attests the soundness of the principle. It is the natural, unmistakable, sharp boundary between the negative and the positive, between not harming and helping. The terminology used until now—duties of right and duties of virtue, the latter also called duties of love or imperfect duties—has, first, the defect of placing genus and species on the same level, since justice, too, is a virtue. It also rests on a far too extensive use of the concept of duty, which I will later restore to its true limits. In place of those two kinds of duty, I therefore put two virtues, justice and loving-kindness, which I call cardinal virtues because all the others proceed from them in practice and can be derived from them in theory. Both are rooted in natural compassion. But compassion itself is an undeniable fact of human consciousness and belongs essentially to it. It does not depend on assumptions, concepts, religions, dogmas, myths, upbringing, or education. It is original and immediate, inherent in human nature itself, and for that very reason holds good under every circumstance and appears in every country and age. Everywhere, then, people confidently appeal to it as something necessarily present in every human being; nowhere does it belong among the “foreign gods.” Someone who seems to lack it, by contrast, is called inhuman; and “humanity” is often used as a synonym for compassion.
The first degree in which this genuine and natural moral incentive operates is therefore merely negative. We are all originally inclined to injustice and violence, because our needs, desires, anger, and hatred enter consciousness immediately and thus have the right of first occupation. By contrast, the sufferings our injustice and violence cause others enter consciousness only by the secondary route of representation, and only through experience—that is, indirectly. Hence Seneca says: “A good disposition comes to no one before a bad one” (Ep. 50). The first degree of compassion's effect, then, is to check the suffering I would otherwise cause others through the antimoral powers dwelling within me. It calls “Stop!” and stands before the other person like a rampart, shielding him from the injury my selfishness or malice would otherwise drive me to inflict. From this first degree of compassion springs the maxim “Harm no one”: the principle of justice. Here alone, and nowhere else, does this virtue have its pure, wholly moral, unalloyed origin, since otherwise it would have to rest on selfishness. If my heart is receptive to compassion to this degree, it will hold me back whenever and wherever I might wish to use another's suffering as a means to my own ends, whether that suffering comes at once or later, directly or indirectly through intermediate links. I will therefore no more attack another's property than his person, no more cause him mental than bodily suffering. I will refrain not only from all physical injury, but equally from causing pain by mental means: through affronts, intimidation, vexation, or slander. The same compassion will keep me from seeking the satisfaction of my desires at the expense of women's happiness in life, from seducing another man's wife, or from corrupting young men morally and physically by enticing them into pederasty. Yet compassion by no means needs to be aroused in every individual case; often it would come too late. Rather, the knowledge gained once and for all of the suffering every unjust act necessarily brings upon others—suffering sharpened by the feeling of enduring wrong, of being overpowered by someone else—gives rise in noble hearts to the maxim “Harm no one.” Rational reflection raises it into a firm resolve, made once and for all: to respect everyone's rights, permit oneself no encroachment on them, remain free of the self-reproach of having caused another's suffering, and thus not shift onto others, by force or cunning, the burdens and sufferings of life that circumstances bring to each of us, but bear one's allotted share oneself, so as not to double someone else's. For although principles, and abstract knowledge in general, are by no means the primal source or first foundation of morality, they are indispensable to a moral life. They are the receptacle, the reservoir, in which the disposition flowing from the source of all morality—a source that does not flow at every moment—is stored, ready to be conducted through channels to wherever a case calls for its use. In morality, then, matters stand as they do in physiology, where, for example, the gallbladder is necessary as a reservoir for what the liver produces, and in many similar cases. Without firmly held principles, we would be helplessly abandoned to the antimoral incentives whenever external impressions inflamed them into passions. Holding to principles and following them despite the motives working against them is self-control. Here, too, lies the reason why women, who because of the weakness of their reason are far less capable than men of understanding general principles, holding to them, and taking them as a guide, generally fall short of men in the virtue of justice, and thus also in honesty and conscientiousness. Hence injustice and deceit are their most frequent vices, and lying is their true element. In the virtue of loving-kindness, on the other hand, they surpass men, since its occasion is usually directly perceived and thus speaks immediately to compassion, to which women are decidedly more receptive. But only what is directly perceived, present, and immediately real has true existence for them. What is distant, absent, past, or future, and can be known only through concepts, is not readily grasped by them. Here, then, there is compensation as well: justice is more the masculine virtue, loving-kindness more the feminine. The thought of seeing women serve as judges provokes laughter; but the Sisters of Mercy surpass even the Brothers of Mercy. The animal, in turn, lacking abstract or rational knowledge altogether, is incapable of any resolutions, much less principles, and therefore of any self-control: it is defenseless against impressions and passions. For this very reason it has no conscious morality, although species show great differences in the malice and goodness of their characters, and among the highest genera even individuals do so.—According to what has been said, compassion operates in the just person's individual actions only indirectly, through principles, and not so much actually as potentially. Something similar happens in statics: the greater velocity produced by the greater length of one arm of a balance, by which a smaller mass counterbalances a larger one, operates in a state of rest only potentially, yet quite as effectively as it would actually. But compassion always remains ready to emerge in actuality as well. Thus, when in particular cases the chosen maxim of justice begins to falter, no motive—selfish motives aside—is more effective in supporting it and reviving just resolutions than one drawn from the primal source itself, compassion. This holds not merely where the injury concerns someone's person, but where it concerns his property as well. If, for example, someone feels tempted to keep a valuable object he has found, nothing—excluding every consideration of prudence and religion—will bring him back to the path of justice so readily as imagining the loser's anxiety, heartache, and lamentation. A sense of this truth often leads people, in a public appeal for the return of lost money, to add the assurance that the loser is poor, a servant, or the like.
These reflections will, I hope, make it clear that, unlikely as it may seem at first glance, justice too, as a genuine, freely practiced virtue, does indeed originate in compassion. Anyone who still finds this soil too meager for that great and truly cardinal virtue to take root in it alone should recall from the foregoing how little genuine, voluntary, unselfish, undisguised justice is found among human beings; how it appears only as a surprising exception, and how, in quality and quantity alike, it stands to its counterfeit—the justice founded on mere prudence and loudly proclaimed everywhere—as gold to copper. I would call the latter “common justice” and the former “heavenly justice,” since it is she who, according to Hesiod, leaves the earth in the Iron Age to dwell among the heavenly gods. The root we have identified is strong enough for this rare plant, always an exotic on earth.
Injustice, or wrong, therefore always consists in injuring another. The concept of wrong is consequently positive and precedes that of right, which is negative and merely designates the actions one can perform without injuring others—that is, without doing wrong. It is easy to see that these also include every action whose sole purpose is to ward off an attempted wrong. For no sympathy with another, no compassion for him, can require me to let him injure me—that is, to suffer wrong. That the concept of right is negative, in contrast to the positive concept of wrong, is also apparent in the first explanation given by the father of the philosophical theory of right, Hugo Grotius, at the beginning of his work: “Right here means nothing other than what is just, and that in a negative rather than an affirmative sense, so that right is what is not unjust” (On the Law of War and Peace, L. I, c. 1, §. 3). The negative character of justice is confirmed, appearances notwithstanding, even in the commonplace definition “To give everyone his own.” If it is his own, there is no need to give it to him; the meaning, then, is “To take from no one what is his own.”—Because the demand of justice is merely negative, it can be enforced: everyone can practice “Harm no one” at the same time. The institution that enforces it is the state, whose sole purpose is to protect individuals from one another, and the whole from external enemies. Some German philosophizers of this venal age would like to distort it into an institution for moral education and edification. In the background lurks the Jesuitical aim of abolishing the individual's personal freedom and development, making him a mere cog in a Chinese machine of state and religion. But that is the road that once led to inquisitions, autos-da-fé, and religious wars. Frederick the Great's words, “In my country everyone should be able to attend to his salvation in his own fashion,” declared that he would never take it. Yet even now we see the state everywhere—with North America more an apparent exception than a real one—undertaking to provide for its members' metaphysical need as well. Governments seem to have chosen as their principle the saying of Quintus Curtius: “Nothing rules the multitude more effectively than superstition. Otherwise unruly, savage, and fickle, once it is captivated by an empty religion it obeys its prophets more readily than its leaders.”
The concepts of wrong and right, as equivalents of injury and noninjury—the latter including the warding off of injury—are plainly independent of all positive legislation and precede it. There is therefore a purely ethical right, or natural law, and a pure theory of right, independent, that is, of all enacted law. Its principles do have an empirical origin insofar as they arise on the occasion of the concept of injury. In themselves, however, they rest on the pure understanding, which supplies a priori the principle “The cause of a cause is the cause of its effect.” Here this means that the other person, not I, is himself the cause of what I must do to ward off his injury to me; I can therefore resist every encroachment on his part without wronging him. It is, so to speak, a moral law of recoil. Thus the combination of the empirical concept of injury with the rule supplied by the pure understanding gives rise to the fundamental concepts of wrong and right, which everyone grasps a priori and immediately applies as experience provides occasion. An empiricist who denies this, since experience alone counts for him, need only be referred to the savages, all of whom distinguish wrong from right quite correctly, often with subtlety and precision. This is strikingly evident in their barter and other agreements with the crews of European ships, and in their visits aboard them. They are bold and confident when they are in the right, but anxious when right is not on their side. In disputes they accept a just settlement, whereas unjust treatment provokes them to war.—The theory of right is a part of morality that establishes which actions one may not perform unless one wishes to injure others—that is, to do wrong. Morality here has the active side in view. Legislation, however, takes this chapter of morality and uses it with regard to the passive side, thus in reverse, considering these same actions as things no one need suffer, since no one should have wrong done to him. Against these actions the state now erects the bulwark of laws, as positive law. Its purpose is that no one should suffer wrong; the purpose of the moral theory of right, by contrast, is that no one should do wrong.18
In every unjust action, the wrong is the same in quality: injury to another, whether in his person, freedom, property, or honor. But in quantity it can differ greatly. This difference in the magnitude of wrong seems not yet to have been adequately investigated by moralists; yet it is acknowledged everywhere in actual life, since the degree of blame expressed corresponds to it. The same holds for the justice of actions. To illustrate: someone who steals a loaf of bread when close to starvation does wrong; but how slight is his injustice beside that of a rich man who in some way deprives a poor man of his last possession. A rich man who pays his day laborer acts justly; but how slight is that justice beside that of a poor man who voluntarily returns to a rich man a purse of gold he has found. The measure of this highly significant difference in the quantity of justice and injustice—the quality always remaining the same—is not direct and absolute, like a ruler's, but indirect and relative, like that of sines and tangents. I propose the following formula: the magnitude of the injustice of my action equals the magnitude of the harm I thereby inflict on another, divided by the magnitude of the advantage I myself thereby gain; and the magnitude of the justice of my action equals the magnitude of the advantage injuring the other person would bring me, divided by the magnitude of the harm he would thereby suffer.—But beyond this there is also a double injustice, different in kind from every single injustice, however great. This is shown by the fact that the indignation of an uninvolved witness, which is always proportional to the magnitude of the injustice, reaches its highest degree only in the case of double injustice. He abhors it as something outrageous and crying out to heaven: an atrocity, a sacrilege, at which the gods themselves seem to veil their faces. This double injustice occurs where someone has expressly undertaken an obligation to protect another in a particular respect, so that merely failing to fulfill that obligation would already injure the other person and thus be wrong; but then, beyond this, he himself attacks and injures that person in the very matter in which he should have protected him. This happens, for example, when an appointed watchman or escort becomes a murderer, an entrusted custodian becomes a thief, a guardian deprives his wards of their property, an advocate betrays his client's cause, a judge takes a bribe, or someone asked for advice deliberately gives the questioner ruinous counsel. All these are comprehended in the concept of betrayal, which the world abhors. Accordingly, Dante places traitors at the very bottom of hell, where Satan himself resides (Inf., XI, 61–66).
Now that the concept of obligation has come up, this is the place to define the concept of duty, so frequently used in ethics and in life, yet given too broad an extension. We have found that wrong always consists in injuring another, whether in his person, freedom, property, or honor. This seems to imply that every wrong must be a positive attack, a deed. But there are actions whose mere omission is a wrong: such actions are called duties. This is the true philosophical definition of the concept of duty. It loses all its distinctiveness and is thereby lost altogether when, as in previous moral theories, one chooses to call every praiseworthy way of acting a duty, forgetting that what is a duty must also be owed. Duty—what is required, what one owes, duty—is therefore an action by whose mere omission one injures another, that is, does wrong. Clearly, this can be the case only because the person omitting it has pledged himself to such an action—that is, has undertaken an obligation. All duties, then, rest on an obligation that has been undertaken. As a rule, this is an express, reciprocal agreement, as, for example, between prince and people, government and official, master and servant, advocate and client, physician and patient; in general, between anyone who has undertaken a service of any kind and the person commissioning it, in the broadest sense of the word. Every duty therefore confers a right, since no one can bind himself without a motive—which here means without some advantage to himself. I know of only one obligation undertaken not through an agreement but directly through a mere action, because the person toward whom one has it did not yet exist when one undertook it: the obligation of parents toward their children. Whoever brings a child into the world has the duty to support it until it can support itself. And should that time never come, as with someone blind, crippled, afflicted with cretinism, or the like, the duty never ends either. For merely withholding help—an omission—would injure his child, indeed bring it to destruction. Children's moral duty toward their parents is not so immediate and definite. It rests on the fact that, since every duty confers a right, parents too must have a right against their children. This establishes the children's duty of obedience, which, however, later ends along with the right from which it arose. Gratitude will then take its place for whatever the parents have done beyond their strict duty. Yet however ugly and often even outrageous a vice ingratitude may be, gratitude cannot be called a duty, because its absence is no injury to another and hence no wrong. Otherwise the benefactor would have to have supposed that he was tacitly striking a bargain.—At most, compensation for damage done might be put forward as an obligation arising directly from an action. Yet this, as the undoing of the consequences of an unjust action, is merely an effort to efface it: something purely negative, resting on the fact that the action itself should not have occurred.—Let it also be noted here that equity is the enemy of justice and often does it grave injury; one should therefore not concede too much to it. The German is a friend of equity; the Englishman sides with justice.
The law of motivation is just as strict as that of physical causality and therefore carries an equally irresistible compulsion. Accordingly, there are two ways of doing wrong: force and cunning. Just as I can kill or rob another, or compel him to obey me, by force, I can accomplish all this by cunning as well, by placing false motives before his intellect, in consequence of which he must do what he would otherwise not do. This happens through the lie. Its wrongfulness rests on this alone and thus attaches to it only insofar as it is an instrument of cunning—that is, of coercion through motivation. As a rule, however, it is precisely this. For, first, my lying itself cannot happen without a motive; and, with the rarest exceptions, that motive will be an unjust one: the intention of directing others, over whom I have no power, according to my will—that is, coercing them through motivation. This intention underlies even a mere braggart's lie, since whoever uses it seeks to gain greater standing with others than he deserves.—The binding force of a promise or contract rests on the fact that, if unfulfilled, they are the most solemn lies. Their intention to exert moral coercion over others is all the more evident here because the motive for the lie—the performance demanded of the other party—is expressly stated. Fraud is contemptible because it disarms its victim with a show of sincerity before attacking him. Betrayal is its summit, and is deeply abhorred because it belongs to the category of double injustice. But just as I can repel force by force without wrong, and thus rightfully, so I can also do so by cunning, where I lack force or find cunning more convenient. In cases where I have a right to force, then, I also have a right to lie: against robbers, for example, and every kind of unjust aggressor, whom I may accordingly lure into a trap by cunning. For this reason, a promise extorted by force is not binding.—But the right to lie in fact goes further. It arises with every wholly unauthorized question concerning my personal or business affairs, and is therefore impertinent, where not only answering it but even merely rejecting it with “I won't say” would arouse suspicion and place me in danger. Here lying is self-defense against unauthorized curiosity, whose motive is usually not benevolent. For I have the right to oppose the presumed ill will of others, and the physical force consequently to be expected from them, with physical resistance in advance, at the intruder's own risk: as a preventive measure I may top my garden wall with sharp spikes, let vicious dogs loose in my courtyard at night, and, according to circumstances, even set caltrops and spring guns, whose harmful consequences the intruder has himself to blame for. In the same way, I have the right to keep secret, by every means, anything whose disclosure would expose me to attack by others. I have reason to do so as well, because here too I must regard others' ill will as quite possible and take precautions against it beforehand. Hence Ariosto says:
Although dissembling is most oftenCondemned, and signals an ill-intentioned mind,Still, in many matters, many times,It has plainly brought about much good,And warded off harm, disgrace, and death:For we do not always speak with friendsIn this mortal life, far more dark than bright,So full of envy.19
(Orl. fur., IV, 1.)
Thus, without doing wrong, I may forestall even a merely presumed injury by cunning with cunning of my own. I therefore need neither answer someone who peers without warrant into my private affairs nor, by replying “I want to keep that secret,” indicate the place where a secret lies that would endanger me, perhaps benefit him, and in any case give him power over me:
“They want to know the household's secrets, and through them to be feared.”
Instead, I am then entitled to put him off with a lie, at his own risk should it lead him into a harmful error. For here a lie is the only means of meeting this prying and suspicious curiosity: I am therefore acting in self-defense. “Ask me no questions, and I'll tell you no lies”20 is the right maxim here. Among the English, who regard the accusation of lying as the gravest insult and for that very reason really do lie less than other nations, all unauthorized questions about another person's affairs are accordingly regarded as an impertinence, designated by the expression “to ask questions.”—Every sensible person acts on the principle stated above, even if he is of the strictest integrity. If, for example, he is returning from a distant place where he has collected money, and an unknown traveler joins him, asking, as people commonly do, first where he is going, then where he has come from, and gradually what might have taken him there, he will answer with a lie to forestall the danger of robbery. A man found in the house where the father of the daughter he is courting lives, and asked the reason for his unexpected presence, will, unless he is a fool, give a false one without hesitation. And so there are very many cases in which every reasonable person lies without the least scruple of conscience. This view alone removes the glaring contradiction between the morality that is taught and the morality practiced daily, even by the most honest and the best. Yet the stated restriction to cases of self-defense must be strictly maintained; otherwise this doctrine would stand open to appalling abuse, for a lie is in itself a very dangerous instrument. But just as, despite the public peace, the law permits everyone to carry and use weapons, namely in self-defense, so morality permits the use of a lie in the same case, and likewise only in that case. Apart from this case of self-defense against force or cunning, every lie is a wrong; justice therefore demands truthfulness toward everyone. But against the wholly unconditional, exceptionless condemnation of lying as something inherently reprehensible stands the fact that there are cases where lying is even a duty, notably for physicians; that there are generous lies, such as the Marquis of Posa's in Don Carlos, the one in Jerusalem Delivered, II, 22, and, in general, all those cases where someone wishes to take another's guilt upon himself; and finally, that even Jesus Christ once deliberately spoke an untruth (Joh. 7, 8). Accordingly, Campanella, in his Philosophical Poems, madr. 9, says outright: “Lying is beautiful when it brings about great good.”21 By contrast, the current doctrine of the lie of necessity is a wretched patch on the garment of a miserable morality.—The attempts, prompted by Kant and offered in various compendiums, to derive the wrongfulness of lying from the human capacity for speech are so shallow, childish, and absurd that, merely to mock them, one might be tempted to throw oneself into the devil's arms and say with Talleyrand: “Man was given speech so that he could conceal his thoughts.”—Kant's unconditional, boundless abhorrence of lying, paraded on every occasion, rests either on affectation or on prejudice. In the chapter on lying in his “Doctrine of Virtue,” he heaps every dishonorable epithet upon it, yet supplies no real reason for its reprehensibility, though a reason would have been more effective. Declaiming is easier than proving, and moralizing easier than being sincere. Kant would have done better to unleash that particular zeal against delight in others' suffering: this, not lying, is the truly diabolical vice. For it is the direct opposite of compassion, and nothing other than impotent cruelty: unable itself to bring about the sufferings it so delights to see in others, it thanks chance for doing so in its stead.—That, under the principle of chivalric honor, the accusation of lying is taken so gravely and held to require washing away with the accuser's blood does not arise from the fact that lying is wrong. If it did, an accusation of wrong committed by force would have to wound just as deeply, which, as everyone knows, it does not. Rather, it arises because, under the principle of chivalric honor, force is what actually establishes right. Anyone who resorts to a lie to commit a wrong thereby proves that he lacks either force or the courage needed to use it. Every lie bears witness to fear: that condemns him.
18 The full theory of right can be found in “The World as Will and Representation,” Bd. 1, §. 62.
19 However often dissembling is condemned and shows bad intentions, it has plainly done good in very many matters by averting harm, disgrace, and death: for we do not always speak with friends in this mortal life, far more dark than bright, which teems with envy.
20 Do not question me, and I will not lie to you.
21 Lying is beautiful when it brings about much good.
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 Virtue of Justice.
A closer look at compassion, the process identified above as the basic phenomenon of ethics, immediately shows two clearly separate degrees. Another person's suffering can directly become my motive—that is, determine what I do or refrain from doing—in either of these ways. First, it can work against selfish or malicious motives and stop me from making someone else suffer: from bringing about suffering that does not yet exist and becoming the cause of another person's pain. Then, at the higher degree, compassion can work positively and drive me to give active help. The distinction between so-called duties of right and duties of virtue, or more accurately between justice and loving kindness, emerges here entirely on its own. Kant could arrive at it only by forcing things. Its natural emergence confirms the soundness of the principle. It is the natural, unmistakable, clear boundary between the negative and the positive, between not hurting and helping. The existing names, duties of right and duties of virtue—the latter also called duties of love or imperfect duties—have a basic flaw: they put a general class alongside one of its subdivisions. Justice is a virtue too. These names also rest on far too broad a use of the concept of duty. I will return that concept to its proper limits below. In place of these two duties, then, I put two virtues: justice and loving kindness. I call them cardinal virtues because all the others arise from them in practice and can be derived from them in theory. Both have their roots in natural compassion. Compassion itself is an undeniable fact of human consciousness, an essential part of it. It does not depend on assumptions, concepts, religions, dogmas, myths, upbringing, or education. It is original and direct, grounded in human nature itself. That is precisely why it holds good under all conditions and appears in every country and age. People everywhere confidently appeal to it as something that must be present in every human being. Nowhere does it count as one of the "foreign gods." By contrast, we call someone who seems to lack it inhuman; and "humanity" is often used as another word for compassion.
The first degree at which this genuine, natural moral incentive works is therefore only negative. To begin with, we are all inclined toward injustice and violence. Our needs, desires, anger, and hatred enter consciousness directly and so have the right of first occupancy. The suffering that our injustice and violence cause others, on the other hand, enters consciousness only by the secondary route of mental representation, and only through experience: in other words, indirectly. That is why Seneca says, "No one acquires a good disposition before having a bad one" (Ep. 50). The first degree of compassion's effect, then, is to oppose and check the suffering I would cause others through the anti-moral forces within me. It calls out "Stop!" and stands as a defensive barrier in front of the other person, protecting him from the harm my selfishness or malice would otherwise drive me to inflict. From this first degree of compassion comes the rule "hurt no one": the principle of justice. Here alone this virtue has its pure, unmixed, genuinely moral origin. It cannot have such an origin anywhere else, because otherwise it would have to rest on selfishness. If I am receptive to compassion to this degree, it will hold me back whenever and wherever I might want to use another person's suffering as a means to my own ends. It makes no difference whether that suffering comes at once or later, directly or indirectly through intermediate steps. I will therefore attack neither another person's property nor his person, and cause him neither mental nor physical suffering. I will not only refrain from physical harm but also avoid causing mental pain through insults, intimidation, vexation, or slander. The same compassion will keep me from seeking to satisfy my lust at the expense of women's happiness in life, from seducing another man's wife, or from corrupting young men morally and physically by leading them into pederasty. Still, compassion need not actually be stirred in every single case; it would often come too late. Noble minds have learned once and for all that every unjust act necessarily brings suffering on others, sharpened by the feeling of being wronged—that is, of being at the mercy of someone else's greater power. This knowledge gives rise to the rule "hurt no one." Rational reflection raises it into a firm, settled resolve: to respect everyone's rights, never to permit oneself to infringe them, and to remain free of the self-reproach of having caused another person's suffering. It also means not using force or cunning to shift onto others the burdens and suffering that life's circumstances bring each of us, and instead carrying one's own allotted share, so as not to double someone else's. For although principles, and abstract knowledge in general, are certainly not the original source or first foundation of morality, they are indispensable for a moral life. They are the container, the reservoir, in which we store the disposition that comes from the source of all morality. That source does not flow at every moment; when an occasion for action comes, its stored contents can flow there through channels. Morality in this respect resembles physiology. The gallbladder, for example, is needed as a reservoir for what the liver produces; and there are many similar cases. Without firmly established principles, we would be helplessly exposed to anti-moral incentives whenever outside impressions stirred them into strong emotions. Holding to our principles and following them despite opposing motives is self-control. Here, too, lies the reason why women generally fall below men in the virtue of justice, and therefore in honesty and conscientiousness. Because of the weakness of their reason, they are much less able than men to understand general principles, hold on to them, and use them as guides. Injustice and deceit are therefore their most common vices, and lying is their true element. But they surpass men in the virtue of loving kindness. The occasion for this virtue is usually something directly perceived, so it speaks immediately to compassion, to which women are decidedly more receptive. Yet only what can be directly perceived, what is present and immediately real, truly exists for them. They have difficulty grasping the distant, absent, past, or future, which can be known only through concepts. So there is compensation here too: justice is more the male virtue, loving kindness more the female. The thought of seeing women serve as judges provokes laughter; but the Sisters of Mercy surpass even the Brothers of Mercy. The animal goes further still: it entirely lacks abstract or rational knowledge. It is incapable of resolutions, let alone principles, and therefore of self-control. It is defenseless against impressions and emotions. Precisely for this reason it has no conscious morality, although species differ greatly in malice and goodness of character, as do individuals in the highest groups. Thus in the just person's individual actions, compassion now works only indirectly, through principles: not so much actually as potentially. It is rather like the greater speed made possible in statics by a longer balance arm, which lets the smaller mass balance the larger. At rest this speed works only potentially, yet just as effectively as if it were actual. Compassion nevertheless remains ready to become active itself. So if the chosen principle of justice ever falters in a particular case, no motive—leaving selfish ones aside—is more effective in supporting it and reviving just intentions than one drawn from the original source, compassion. This applies not only to harm against someone's person but also to harm against his property. Suppose, for example, that someone feels tempted to keep a valuable object he has found. Apart from all prudential and religious motives against doing so, nothing will bring him back to the path of justice more readily than imagining the loser's anxiety, heartbreak, and lamenting. A sense of this truth often leads people who publicly appeal for the return of lost money to add that the loser is poor, a servant, or someone of that kind.
I hope these considerations make it clear that justice too, as a genuine, freely practiced virtue, has its origin in compassion, however unlikely that may seem at first. If this still seems too meager a soil for such a great and truly cardinal virtue to have its only root in, recall what was said above. Genuine, voluntary, unselfish, undisguised justice is found among human beings only in very small measure. It always appears as a surprising exception. In both quality and quantity it stands to its imitation—the justice based on mere prudence and loudly advertised everywhere—as gold stands to copper. I would call the latter common justice and the former heavenly justice. For it is the former that, according to Hesiod, leaves the earth in the Iron Age to live with the heavenly gods. The root I have identified is strong enough for this rare plant, which is always an exotic on earth.
Injustice, or wrong, therefore always consists in hurting someone else. The concept of wrong is thus positive and comes before the concept of right. The latter is negative and merely identifies the actions we can perform without hurting others—that is, without doing wrong. It is easy to see that this also includes every action whose sole purpose is to ward off an attempted wrong. No concern for another person, no compassion for him, can require me to let him hurt me: to suffer a wrong. That the concept of right is negative, as opposed to wrong, which is positive, is also clear from the first explanation of this concept given by the father of the philosophical theory of right, Hugo Grotius, at the beginning of his work: "Right here means nothing other than what is just, and that in a negative rather than an affirmative sense: right is what is not unjust" (On the Law of War and Peace, L. I, c. 1, §. 3). The negative nature of justice shows itself, despite appearances, even in the commonplace definition "Give everyone what is his." If it is his, there is no need to give it to him. What this means, then, is "Take from no one what is his." Because justice makes only a negative demand, it can be enforced: everyone can practice "hurt no one" at the same time. The institution that enforces it is the state. Its sole purpose is to protect individuals from one another and the whole community from external enemies. Some German would-be philosophers of this venal age want to twist it into an institution for moral education and spiritual improvement. Behind this lurks the Jesuit aim of abolishing personal freedom and individual development, turning each person into a mere cog in a Chinese machine of state and religion. But that is the road that once led to inquisitions, autos-da-fé, and religious wars. Frederick the Great's statement, "In my country everyone should be able to see to his own salvation in his own way," meant that he never intended to take that road. Yet even now we see the state everywhere assuming responsibility for its members' metaphysical needs, with North America more an apparent than a real exception. Governments seem to have chosen as their principle the saying of Quintus Curtius: "Nothing controls the masses more effectively than superstition. Otherwise unruly, savage, and changeable, once they are captured by an empty religion they obey prophets more readily than their own leaders."
The concepts of wrong and right mean hurting and not hurting, with the latter including the warding off of harm. Clearly, these concepts are independent of all enacted law and come before it. There is therefore a purely ethical right, or natural right, and a pure theory of right independent of all enacted rules. Its principles do have an empirical origin insofar as they arise on the occasion of the concept of harm. In themselves, however, they rest on pure understanding, which supplies the following principle a priori: the cause of a cause is the cause of its effect. Here that means that whatever I must do to prevent someone else from hurting me has him, not me, as its cause. I can therefore resist all his encroachments without doing him wrong. It is, so to speak, a moral law of recoil. Thus the empirical concept of harm combines with this rule supplied by pure understanding to produce the basic concepts of wrong and right. Everyone grasps these a priori and immediately applies them when experience presents the occasion. An empiricist who denies this, and accepts experience alone, need only be referred to the savages. They all distinguish wrong and right correctly, often with subtlety and precision. This is especially striking in their barter and other agreements with the crews of European ships, and in their visits aboard them. They are bold and confident when right is on their side, but anxious when it is not. In disputes they accept a just settlement, whereas unjust treatment drives them to war. The theory of right is a part of morality that identifies the actions we must not perform if we do not want to hurt others—that is, commit a wrong. Morality here considers the active side. Legislation takes this chapter of morality and uses it in reverse, with regard to the passive side. It considers these same actions as things no one has to endure, since no one should suffer a wrong. Against these actions the state erects the barrier of laws, as enacted law. Its aim is that no one should suffer a wrong. The aim of the moral theory of right, by contrast, is that no one should do wrong.18
In every unjust action the wrong is the same in quality: hurting someone else, whether in his person, freedom, property, or honor. But it can differ greatly in quantity. Moralists do not seem to have properly investigated this difference in the size of a wrong. Yet it is recognized everywhere in actual life: the amount of blame people express corresponds to it. The same applies to the justice of actions. To illustrate: someone on the verge of starvation who steals a loaf of bread commits a wrong. But how small his injustice is compared with that of a rich man who somehow deprives a poor man of his last possessions. A rich man who pays his day laborer acts justly. But how small this justice is compared with that of a poor man who voluntarily returns a purse of gold he has found to its rich owner. The measure of this very significant difference in the quantity of justice and injustice, while their quality remains the same, is not direct and absolute like the measure on a ruler. It is indirect and relative, like that of sines and tangents. I propose the following formula: the size of the injustice of my action equals the size of the harm I cause someone else by it, divided by the size of the benefit I gain from it. And the size of the justice of my action equals the size of the benefit I would gain by hurting someone else, divided by the size of the harm he would suffer from it. Besides this, however, there is a double injustice, different in kind from any single injustice, however great. This shows itself in the indignation of an uninvolved witness, which is always proportional to the size of the injustice. Only with double injustice does it reach its highest degree, and the witness then abhors it as something outrageous, crying out to heaven: an atrocity, a sacrilege, at which the gods themselves seem to cover their faces. This double injustice occurs when someone has expressly undertaken an obligation to protect another person in a particular respect. Merely failing to fulfill this obligation would already hurt the other person and so be a wrong. But the person now goes further and himself attacks and hurts the other person in the very respect in which he was supposed to protect him. This happens, for example, when an appointed guard or escort becomes a murderer; when a trusted custodian becomes a thief; when a guardian deprives his wards of their property; when an attorney betrays his client's case; when a judge takes a bribe; or when someone asked for advice deliberately gives advice that will ruin the questioner. All these come under the concept of betrayal, which the world abhors. Accordingly, Dante places traitors at the very bottom of hell, where Satan himself lives (Inf., XI, 61–66).
Now that the concept of obligation has come up, this is the place to define the concept of duty, which is used so often in ethics and in life, but given too broad a scope. We have found that wrong always consists in hurting someone else, whether in his person, freedom, property, or honor. It seems to follow that every wrong must be a positive attack, an act. But there are actions whose mere omission is a wrong. Such actions are called duties. This is the true philosophical definition of duty. The concept loses its distinctive character, and is therefore lost altogether, if we follow previous moral teaching and call every praiseworthy way of acting a duty. That forgets that a duty must also be something owed. Duty—what ought to be done, what is owed, duty—is therefore an action whose mere omission hurts someone else, that is, commits a wrong. Clearly this can happen only if the person omitting the action has undertaken to perform it: has placed himself under an obligation. All duties therefore rest on an obligation undertaken. As a rule this is an explicit mutual agreement: between ruler and people, government and officials, master and servant, attorney and client, doctor and patient, or, more generally, anyone who has undertaken to provide any kind of service and the person who commissioned it, in the broadest sense of that word. That is why every duty confers a right: no one can undertake an obligation without a motive, which here means some benefit to himself. I know of only one obligation that is undertaken not through an agreement but directly through an act alone. The person to whom it is owed did not yet exist when it was undertaken. This is the obligation of parents to their children. Whoever brings a child into the world has the duty to support it until it can support itself. If that time should never come—as with a blind person, a cripple, a cretin, or the like—the duty never ends either. For merely failing to give help, an omission, would hurt the child and indeed bring about its destruction. The moral duty of children to their parents is not so direct and definite. It rests on the fact that, since every duty confers a right, parents too must have a right against their children. This establishes the children's duty of obedience. Later, however, that duty ends along with the right from which it arose. Gratitude then takes its place, for whatever the parents did beyond their strict duty. Ingratitude is an ugly vice, often even an outrageous one, but gratitude should not be called a duty. Its absence does not hurt the other person and is therefore no wrong. Otherwise the benefactor would have to have thought he was silently making a bargain. Compensation for damage caused might perhaps be put forward as an obligation arising directly from an act. But this only reverses the consequences of an unjust act and is a mere attempt to erase it. It is something purely negative, based on the fact that the act itself should not have occurred. It should also be noted here that equity is the enemy of justice and often does it serious damage. We should therefore not give it too much room. The German favors equity; the Englishman sides with justice.
The law of motivation is just as strict as the law of physical causation, and therefore brings with it an equally irresistible compulsion. Accordingly, there are two ways of committing a wrong: force and cunning. Just as I can use force to kill or rob another person, or compel him to obey me, I can also do all this through cunning. I put false motives before his intellect, and as a result he must do what he otherwise would not do. This is done by means of a lie. Its wrongfulness rests on this alone, and attaches to it only insofar as it is a tool of cunning—that is, of compulsion through motivation. As a rule, however, that is what it is. To begin with, even my lying cannot happen without a motive. With the rarest exceptions, that motive will be unjust: the intention to direct others over whom I have no power according to my own will, to compel them through motivation. This intention underlies even merely boastful lying. The person who uses it tries to gain more standing in other people's eyes than he deserves. The binding force of a promise or contract rests on the fact that, if unfulfilled, it is the most solemn kind of lie. The intention to exercise mental compulsion over another person is all the more obvious here, since the motive for lying—the performance demanded of the other party—is expressly stated. Fraud is contemptible because it disarms its victim through a show of sincerity before attacking him. Betrayal is its highest point and is deeply abhorred because it belongs to the category of double injustice. But just as I can repel force with force without doing wrong, and therefore rightfully, I can also repel it through cunning if I lack force or find cunning more convenient. Thus, in cases where I have a right to use force, I also have a right to lie. This applies, for example, against robbers and aggressors of every kind who have no right to use violence, and whom I therefore lure into a trap by cunning. That is why a promise extorted by force is not binding. But the right to lie actually goes further. It applies to every wholly unauthorized question about my personal or business affairs—a prying question—if not only answering it but even refusing it with "I won't say" would arouse suspicion and put me in danger. Here lying is self-defense against unauthorized curiosity, which is usually not well-intentioned. I have the right to prepare physical resistance against other people's presumed ill will and the physical violence I accordingly anticipate, at the risk of the aggressor. As a preventive measure I can therefore put sharp spikes on my garden wall, let vicious dogs loose in my yard at night, and even, depending on the circumstances, set foot traps and spring guns. The intruder has only himself to blame for their harmful consequences. In the same way, I have the right to use every means to keep secret anything whose disclosure would expose me to attack by others. I also have reason to do so, because here too I must assume that others' ill will is quite possible and take precautions against it in advance. That is why Ariosto says:
Although pretense is most oftenBlamed and taken as a sign of bad intent,Still, in many, many mattersIt has plainly done good,Preventing harm, disgrace, and death:For we do not always deal with friendsIn this mortal life, much darker than bright,And filled with envy.19
(Orl. fur., IV, 1.)
Thus, without doing wrong, I may use cunning in advance to counter even a merely presumed attempt to hurt me through cunning. I need not answer someone who pries without permission into my private affairs. Nor need I say "I want to keep that secret," pointing out the place where a secret lies that is dangerous to me, perhaps useful to him, and in any case gives him power over me:
They want to know the household's secrets, and so be feared.
Instead, I am entitled to put him off with a lie, at his own risk if it leads him into a harmful mistake. Here lying is the only way to meet prying, suspicious curiosity; I am therefore in a position of self-defense. "Ask me no questions, and I'll tell you no lies"20 is the right rule here. Among the English, accusing someone of lying is regarded as the gravest insult. For that very reason they really do lie less than other nations. Correspondingly, all unauthorized questions about another person's affairs are considered bad manners, described by the expression "to ask questions." Every sensible person acts on the principle stated above, even if he is scrupulously upright. Suppose, for example, that he is returning from a remote place where he has collected money. An unknown traveler joins him and, as usual, first asks where he is going, then where he has come from, and gradually what took him to that place. He will answer with a lie to guard against the danger of robbery. Someone who is found in the house where the father of a daughter he is courting lives, and is asked why he is unexpectedly there, will give a false reason without hesitation, unless he is a fool. There are very many such cases in which every reasonable person lies without any qualms of conscience. Only this view removes the glaring contradiction between the morality people teach and the morality practiced daily, even by the most honest and best people. Yet the restriction stated above, to cases of self-defense, must be strictly maintained. Otherwise this teaching would be open to horrible abuse, since lying is in itself a very dangerous tool. Although the law protects the public peace, it still allows everyone to carry and use weapons, that is, in self-defense. In the same way, morality allows lying in that case, but also only in that case. Apart from this case of self-defense against force or cunning, every lie is a wrong. Justice therefore demands truthfulness toward everyone. But the claim that lying is utterly and unconditionally reprehensible, without exception and by its very nature, is already contradicted by the existence of cases in which lying is even a duty, particularly for doctors. There are also noble lies: that of the Marquis of Posa in Don Carlos, the one in Jerusalem Delivered, II, 22, and all cases in general where one person wants to take another's guilt upon himself. Finally, even Jesus Christ once deliberately spoke an untruth (Joh. 7, 8). Accordingly, Campanella, in his Philosophical Poems, madr. 9, says outright, "Lying is beautiful when it brings about great good."21 By contrast, the usual doctrine of the lie of necessity is a miserable patch on the clothing of a poverty-stricken morality. The arguments given in some textbooks at Kant's prompting, which derive the wrongfulness of lying from the human power of speech, are so shallow, childish, and absurd that merely to mock them one might be tempted to throw oneself into the devil's arms and say with Talleyrand, "Human beings were given speech so they could hide their thoughts." Kant's unconditional, boundless horror of lying, displayed on every occasion, rests either on affectation or on prejudice. In the chapter on lying in his "Doctrine of Virtue," he denounces it with every insulting description but supplies no actual reason for its reprehensibility. A real reason would have been more effective. Declaiming is easier than proving, and moralizing easier than being sincere. Kant would have done better to direct this special zeal against pleasure in others' suffering. That, not lying, is the truly devilish vice. It is the exact opposite of compassion: nothing but powerless cruelty. Unable to bring about the suffering it so enjoys seeing in others, it thanks chance for doing the job in its place. Under the code of chivalric honor, an accusation of lying is taken so very seriously that it must actually be washed away with the accuser's blood. This is not because lying is wrong. If it were, an accusation of a wrong committed by force would have to cause just as grave an offense, which, as everyone knows, it does not. The reason is that, under the code of chivalric honor, force is really what establishes right. A person who resorts to a lie to commit a wrong shows that he lacks force, or the courage needed to use it. Every lie shows fear. That is what condemns him.
18 A full account of the theory of right can be found in "The World as Will and Representation," Bd. 1, §. 62.
19 However much pretense is usually blamed and taken as evidence of bad intent, it has nevertheless plainly done good in very many matters by preventing harm, disgrace, and death. For we do not always speak with friends in this mortal life, which is much darker than bright and overflows with envy.
20 Don't question me, and I won't lie to you.
21 Lying is beautiful when it brings about much good.
About this section
Section 17 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 18 of 24 in the work, which is kept in the European tradition.
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