Ethical Systems

Wilhelm Wundt

Description

Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. Hesperides Press are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

Informations

• Publié par: Read Books Ltd.
• Date de parution: 01 décembre 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781528760003
• Langue: English

Extrait

ETHICAL SYSTEMS
SOME OPINIONS OF THE PRESS

Nowhere is the relation between ethics and instinct and between ethics and religion more closely investigated. Patiently and laboriously the evidence of language and customs is studied ; the lessons furnished by anthropology are collected ; there is an elaborate study of the forms of society ; and in the end Wundt formulates his famous law of the heterogeny of ends -the law according to which manifestations of will over the whole range of man s voluntary action are always of such a character that the effects of the actions extend more or less widely beyond the original motives of volition, so that new resolves are originated for future action, and again in their turn produce new effects .- Times .
There is no living German philosopher who enjoys a greater reputation in his own country than Professor Wundt, and the translation of this important work will have conferred a boon on all English students of philosophy.
Scotsman.
The translators are to be congratulated on their complete success in rendering this part into smooth and readable English without any unfaithfulness to the literal meaning of the original. The convenience of the reader is further consulted by the preservation of the German pagination throughout and by the addition of an excellent index. - Mind.
We strongly recommend all students of ethics to study this able and luminous sketch of the development of the science.
University Correspondent.
ETHICS:
AN INVESTIGATION
OF THE
FACTS AND LAWS OF THE MORAL LIFE
BY
WILHELM WUNDT
PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF LEIPZIG
Translated from the Second German Edition (1892)
BY
EDWARD BRADFORD TITCHENER
SAGE PROFESSOR OF PSYCHOLOGY IN THE CORNELL UNIVERSITY
JULIA HENRIETTA GULLIVER
PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN ROCKFORD COLLEGE
AND
MARGARET FLOY WASHBURN
PROFESSOR OF PSYCHOLOGY AND ETHICS IN WELLS COLLEGE
V OL . II.
ETHICAL SYSTEMS

LONDON
SWAN SONNENSCHEIN CO., L IM .
NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN CO.
1906
E THICAL S YSTEMS
BY
WILHELM WUNDT
PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF LEIPZIG
Translated by
MARGARET FLOY WASHBURN
PROFESSOR OF PSYCHOLOGY AND ETHICS IN WELLS COLLEGE

LONDON
SWAN SONNENSCHEIN CO., L IM .
NEW YORK; THE MACMILLAN CO.
1906
WUNDT S ETHICS.

V OL . I. I NTRODUCTION : T HE F ACTS OF THE M ORAL L IFE .
V OL . II. E THICAL S YSTEMS , Nov . 1897; Second Edition, Feb . 1906.
V OL . III. T HE P RINCIPLES OF M ORALITY, AND THE S PHERE OF THEIR V ALIDITY .
TRANSLATOR S PREFACE
THIS volume is a translation of the second book of Professor Wundt s Ethik , comprising pages 270-432 of the second German edition. It forms a concise history of Ethics, which (apart from its intrinsic interest as a feature of Wundt s ethical system) will serve to supplement Professor Sidgwick s Outlines by reason of its more extended treatment of Continental schools. The terminology of the first volume has been followed, and English references are substituted for the German wherever possible. Especial thanks are due to Professor E. B. Titchener, of Cornell University, for many helpful suggestions, and for a revision of the proof.
MARGARET FLOY WASHBURN.
CONTENTS
The development of Moral Theories of the Universe
CHAPTER I.
ANCIENT ETHICS
1. The Beginnings of Ancient Ethics
( a ) Pre-Socratic Ethics.
( b ) Socrates and the Socratic Schools
2. Plato and Aristotle
( a ) Platonic Ethics
( b ) The Aristotelian Ethics
3. The Stoics and Epicureans
( a ) Stoic Ethics
( b ) Epicurean Ethics
4. Transition to Christian Ethics
CHAPTER II.
CHRISTIAN ETHICS
1. The General Basis of Christian Ethics
2. The System of Augustine, and the Pelagian Controversy
3. Scholastic Ethics
4. The Fall of Scholasticism and the Ethics of the Reformation
CHAPTER III.
MODERN ETHICS
1. The Development of Empirical Ethics
( a ) Bacon and Hobbes
( b ) John Locke and the Intellectualism of the Cambridge School
( c ) Shaftesbury and the English Ethics of the Understanding
( d ) David Hume and the Scotch Ethics of Feeling
( e ) The Ethics of French Materialism
2. The Metaphysical Ethics of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
( a ) Descartes and Cartesianism
( b ) Spinoza
( c ) Leibniz
( d ) Wolff and the German Enlightenment
3. The Ethics of Kant and of Speculative Idealism
( a ) Kant
( b ) Fichte
( c ) Hegel
( d ) Intermediary Tendencies between Universalism and Individualism
4. Modern Realistic Ethics
( a ) Herbart s Practical Philosophy
( b ) German Naturalism and Materialism
( c ) Utilitarianism and Positivism in England and France
( d ) Utilitarian Ethics as Influenced by the Theory of Evolution
CHAPTER IV.
GENERAL CRITICISM OF ETHICAL SYSTEMS
1. Classification of Ethical Systems
( a ) General Standpoints for such a Classification
( b ) Classification according to motives
( c ) Classification according to ends
2. Authoritative Ethical Systems
3. Eud monistic Systems
( a ) Egoistic Utilitarianism
( b ) Altruistic Utilitarianism
4. Evolutionary Ethical Systems
( a ) Individual Evolutionism
( b ) Universal Evolutionism
I NDEX OF N AMES
I NDEX OF S UBJECTS
V OL . II.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF MORAL THEORIES OF THE UNIVERSE.
CHAPTER I.
ANCIENT ETHICS.
1. THE BEGINNINGS OF ANCIENT ETHICS.
( a ) Pre-Socratic Ethics .
THE earliest Greek speculation was for the most part cosmological . Hence it took little interest in ethical questions. The sayings ascribed to the mythical or semimythical Seven Sages are crystallisations of popular morality, which cannot be treated as the beginnings of a science. The earliest philosophical schools, however, joined to their philosophical endeavours efforts, primarily reformatory, against the popular religion. The Eleatics , especially, in that opposition to polytheism and the humanising of the naturegods, which was begun by their founder Xenophanes, cleared the way at least for later ethical speculations. The same thing is true of the religio-philosophical sect of the Pythagoreans , although, in spite of the great stress they laid upon certain external requirements of conduct, they can scarcely be said to have reached the stage of reflection on the subject of morals. 1 Nor do we find in Heraclitus and Democritus the Atomist anything but isolated ethical maxims. 2 Nevertheless, in the facts that Heraclitus regarded trust in the divine world-order as the source of all human satisfaction, while Democritus, on the other hand, declared cheerfulness and tranquility of temperament to be true happiness, we can see the first flashes of the storm between opposite tendencies which were later to come into conflict.
It is, then, characteristic of the development of ethics that it did not, like other sciences, especially natural philosophy, begin with positive dogmas; but that the first steps it made consisted in denial , in the destruction of existing conceptions of morality. Preceding philosophers had shaken faith in the popular religion: the Sophists began to call into question the moral ideas associated therewith. The Sophists, as we know, gave perhaps less umbrage to their own time by what they taught, than by the way they taught it. They were the first to treat learning as a mercenary career,-an attitude which was an offence against current morality. But the fact that they occupied this attitude, to which we moderns make no objection, is significant also as regards the contents of their teaching. They acknowledged no universally valid norm of human conduct, but assumed that its motives were wholly subjective and hence changing, just as human knowledge was subjective and variable. In spite of this sceptical position, the Sophists show a congruity between their theoretical and practical teachings hardly attained by the earlier philosophers. If there is no universally valid knowledge, then there are no universally valid moral principles. Man, the individual man with his personal opinions and wishes, is in the one case as in the other the measure of things. Really, however, the lack of a moral principle in this system of ethics is only apparent. Though all universally valid principles are abolished, there remains egoism , which the Sophists exhibited in their own mode of life, inasmuch as they applied their knowledge and rhetorical skill to the furtherance of their own interests, evading as far as possible the demands which society and the state make upon the individual. They taught subjectivism, not only because they believed it, but because it was useful to them. It was probably this fact rather than their opposition to the old worn-out cosmological speculations, which rendered their doctrine questionable and hurtful to public morals.
( b ) Socrates and the Socratic Schools .
Thus we see that even the man whom Aristotle called the founder of scientific ethics, even Socrates , stands so far as his relation to preceding philosophical thought is concerned, throughout upon common ground with the Sophists. For him also man, the individual, is the only object deserving a deeper interest. What distinguishes him from his predecessors and contemporaries is his estimation of the motive of human action, in that he regards all those springs of action which are directed towards the satisfaction of a transitory pleasure or a transitory need a