“Does our life have any meaning at all?” - asked V.S. Solovyov. If there is, the Russian philosopher continues, then does it have a moral character, is it rooted in the moral field? And if so, what does it consist of, what is its true and complete definition? “It is impossible to ignore these issues regarding which there is no agreement in the modern consciousness. Some deny any meaning to life, others believe that the meaning of life has nothing to do with morality, that it does not depend at all on our proper or good relationships towards God, towards people and towards the whole world; still others, finally, recognizing the importance of moral norms for life, give them very different definitions, entering into a dispute among themselves that requires analysis and resolution.”
First of all, V.S. Solovyov considers those deniers of life who take the path of suicide. When a theoretical pessimist asserts as a real truth that life is evil and suffering, then he expresses his conviction that life is like this for everyone, but if for everyone, then it means for himself. But if this is so, then on what basis does he live and use the evils of life, as if they were good? They refer to an instinct that forces one to live contrary to the reasonable belief that life is not worth living. According to V.S. Solovyov, such a reference is useless, because instinct is not an external force that mechanically forces one to do something. Instinct manifests itself in the living being itself, prompting it to seek pleasant states that seem desirable or pleasant to it. “And if, thanks to instinct, a pessimist finds pleasure in life, then doesn’t this undermine the very basis for his supposedly rational conviction that life is evil and suffering?”
If we recognize the positive meaning of life, then, of course, a lot can be considered a deception, precisely in relation to this meaning - as trifles that distract from the main and important thing. The Apostle Paul could say that in comparison with the Kingdom of God, which is achieved through life’s struggle, all carnal affections and pleasures for him are rubbish and dung. But for a pessimist who does not believe in the Kingdom of God and does not recognize any positive meaning behind the feat of life, where is the criterion for distinguishing between deception and non-deception?
V.S. Solovyov emphasizes that in order to justify pessimism on this base soil, one remains childishly counting the number of pleasures and sufferings in human life with the preconceived conclusion that there are fewer of the former than the latter, and that, therefore, life is not worth living. In this regard, the philosopher notes: this account of everyday happiness would have any meaning only if the arithmetic sums of pleasures and sorrows really existed or if the arithmetical difference between them could become a real sensation. Here the arithmetic of despair is only a game of the mind, which the supporters of the concept being analyzed themselves refute, finding in life more pleasure than suffering, and recognizing that it is worth living to the end. “Comparing their preaching with their actions, one can only come to the conclusion that there is a meaning in life, that they involuntarily submit to it, but that their mind is not able to master this meaning.”
What about suicides? According to Solovyov, they involuntarily prove the meaning of life. They assumed that life has meaning, but, having become convinced of the inconsistency of what they accepted as the meaning of life, they take their own lives. These people didn't find him, but where did they look for him? Here we have two types of passionate people: some have a purely personal, egoistic passion (Romeo, Werther), others connect their personal passion with one or another historical interest, which they, however, separate from the universal meaning - about this meaning of universal life, from on which the meaning of their own existence depends, they, just like the first, do not want to know anything (Cleopatra, Cato the Younger). Romeo kills himself because he cannot have Juliet. For him, the meaning of life is to possess this woman. But if the meaning of life really lay in this, then how would it differ from nonsense? As V.S. Solovyov wittily notes, besides Romeo, 40 thousand nobles could find the meaning of their lives in the possession of the same Juliet, so that this imaginary meaning of life would deny itself 40 thousand times.
V.S. Solovyov interprets these life situations as follows: what happens in life is not what we think should happen in it, therefore, life has no meaning. “The fact of the discrepancy between the arbitrary demand of a passionate person and reality is taken as an expression of some hostile fate, as something gloomily meaningless, and, not wanting to obey this blind force, the person kills himself.” Defeated by world-power Rome, the Egyptian queen did not want to participate in the triumph of the winner and killed herself with snake venom. The Roman poet Horace called her a great wife for this, and no one will deny the majesty of this death. But if Cleopatra expected her victory as something for granted, and in the victory of Rome she saw only the meaningless triumph of dark power, then she, too, took the darkness of her own view as a sufficient basis for denying universal truth.
V. S. Solovyov draws a legitimate conclusion: it is clear that the meaning of life cannot coincide with the arbitrary and changeable demands of each of the countless individuals of the human race. If it coincided, it would be nonsense, i.e. it wouldn't exist at all. Consequently, it turns out that the disappointed and despairing suicide was disappointed and despaired not of the meaning of life, but quite the opposite - in his hope for the meaninglessness of life: he hoped that life would go the way he wanted, that there would always be only direct satisfaction of his blind passions and arbitrary whims, i.e. will be nonsense. He is disappointed in this and finds that life is not worth living.
But here's the paradox. If he became disillusioned with the meaninglessness of the world, then he thereby recognized the meaning in it. If such an involuntarily recognized meaning is unbearable for this person, if instead of understanding it, he only blames others and gives the truth the name of “hostile fate,” then the essence of the matter does not change.
“The meaning of life is only confirmed,” writes V.S. Solovyov, “by the fatal inconsistency of those who deny it: this denial forces some (pessimistic theorists) to live unworthy - in contradiction with their preaching, and for others (pessimistic practitioners or suicides) the denial of life’s meaning coincides with the actual denial of their very existence.”
The meaning of life is beauty. This is the point of view of F. Nietzsche. V.S. Solovyov does not support this point of view. No matter how much we devote ourselves to the aesthetic cult, we will not find in it not only protection, but not even the slightest indication of the possibility of any protection against that general and inevitable fact that internally abolishes this imaginary divinity of strength and beauty, their imaginary consistency and unconditionality : the end of all local strength is powerlessness and the end of all local beauty is ugliness.
“Is a force that is powerless before death really a force? Is a decaying corpse beauty? The ancient representative of strength and beauty died and decayed only like the most powerless and ugliest creature, and the newest admirer of strength and beauty turned into a mental corpse. Why wasn’t the first saved by his beauty and strength, and the second by his cult of beauty and strength?” In fact, Christianity, against which F. Nietzsche fought, does not deny strength and beauty, it just does not agree to rest on the strength of a dying patient and on the beauty of a decomposing corpse.
According to V.S. Solovyov, the pessimism of false and true suicides involuntarily leads to the idea that there is meaning in life. The cult of strength and beauty involuntarily shows us that this meaning does not lie in strength and beauty, taken in the abstract, but can belong to them only under the condition of triumphant good. So, the meaning of life lies in the idea of good, but here a new chain of delusions is born. First of all, it is important to understand what good is...
Moral meaning of love
The love that connects a man and a woman is a complex set of human experiences and includes sensuality, which is based on a true biological principle, ennobled by moral culture, aesthetic taste and psychological attitudes of the individual. Love between a man and a woman as a moral feeling is based on biological attraction, but cannot be reduced to it. Love affirms another person as a unique being. A person accepts a loved one for who he is, as an absolute value, and sometimes reveals his best, hitherto unrealized possibilities. In this sense, love can mean: a) erotic or romantic (lyrical) experiences associated with sexual attraction and sexual relationships with another person; b) a special emotional connection between lovers or spouses; c) affection and care for a loved one and everything connected with him.
But a person in love needs not just a being of a different sex, but a being who has aesthetic appeal for him, intellectual and emotional psychological value, and a commonality of moral ideas.
Only as a result of the happy unification of all these components does a feeling of harmony in relationships, compatibility and relatedness of souls arise. Love brings bright joy, makes a person’s life pleasant and beautiful, gives birth to bright dreams, inspires and elevates.
Love is the greatest value. Love is a human condition, it is also a person’s right to love and be loved. Love manifests itself as a feeling of incredible inner need in another person. Love is the most vivid emotional need of a person, and, apparently, it expresses a person’s craving for a perfect life - a life that should be built according to the laws of beauty, goodness, freedom, justice.
At the same time, love also contains specific motives. They love for individual features, beautiful eyes, noses, etc. Abstract and concrete characteristics of love, generally speaking, contradict each other. This is her tragedy. The fact is that in a relationship with a loved one, thought apparently moves in the same way as in the ordinary process of cognition. Love begins with specific moments, ignites on the basis of the coincidence of some individual features of the loved one with a pre-formed and presented image in the consciousness or subconscious. Then the isolation of the essence of another person begins, in an abstract form inevitably accompanied by the idealization of this person. If this process is simultaneously accompanied by emotional responses, this leads to increased feelings and closer relationships. Subsequently, apparently, a movement begins from the abstract to the concrete; thought, as it were, begins to try on the abstract image it has formulated to reality. This is the most dangerous stage of love, which can be followed by disappointment - the more rapid and strong, the greater the degree of implementation of abstraction. With different spiritual development, mutual misunderstanding may arise due to different intellectual needs.
Psychologists believe that love lives and develops according to its own special laws, which include both periods of violent passions and periods of peaceful bliss and peace. Then comes the stage of addiction and often a decline and attenuation of emotional arousal. Therefore, in order not to fall into the terrible trap that love prepares, you should definitely strive for mutual spiritual development in love.
The problem of human everyday life arose in ancient times - in fact, when a person made his first attempts to understand himself and his place in the world around him.
However, ideas about everyday life during antiquity and the Middle Ages were predominantly mythological and religious in color.
Thus, the everyday life of ancient people is imbued with mythology, and mythology, in turn, is endowed with many features of the everyday life of people. Gods are improved people who live the same passions, only endowed with greater abilities and capabilities. The gods easily come into contact with people, and people turn to the gods when necessary. Good deeds are rewarded immediately on earth, and bad deeds are immediately punished. Belief in retribution and fear of punishment form the mysticism of consciousness and, accordingly, the everyday existence of a person, manifested both in elementary rituals and in the specifics of perception and understanding of the surrounding world.
It can be argued that the everyday existence of ancient man is twofold: it is conceivable and empirically comprehensible, that is, there is a division of existence into the sensory-empirical world and the ideal world - the world of ideas. The predominance of one or another worldview had a significant impact on the way of life of a person in antiquity. Everyday life is just beginning to be considered as an area of manifestation of human abilities and capabilities.
It is conceived as an existence focused on the self-improvement of the individual, implying the harmonious development of physical, intellectual and spiritual capabilities. At the same time, the material side of life is given a secondary place. One of the highest values of the era of antiquity is moderation, which manifests itself in a rather modest lifestyle.
At the same time, the daily life of an individual cannot be conceived outside of society and is almost completely determined by it. Knowing and fulfilling one’s civic responsibilities is of paramount importance for a policy citizen.
The mystical nature of the everyday life of ancient man, coupled with man’s understanding of his unity with the surrounding world, nature and the Cosmos, makes the everyday life of ancient man sufficiently orderly, giving him a sense of security and confidence.
In the Middle Ages, the world is seen through the prism of God, and religiosity becomes the dominant moment in life, manifesting itself in all spheres of human activity. This determines the formation of a unique worldview, in which everyday life appears as a chain of a person’s religious experience, while religious rituals, commandments, and canons are interwoven into the individual’s way of life. The entire range of human emotions and feelings has a religious overtones (faith in God, love for God, hope for salvation, fear of God’s wrath, hatred of the tempter devil, etc.).
Earthly life is saturated with spiritual content, due to which there is a merging of spiritual and sensory-empirical existence. Life provokes a person to commit sinful acts, “throwing” all sorts of temptations at him, but it also gives him the opportunity to atone for his sins through moral deeds.
During the Renaissance, ideas about the purpose of man and his way of life underwent significant changes. During this period, both man and his daily life appear in a new light. Man is presented as a creative personality, a co-creator with God, who is able to change himself and his life, who has become less dependent on external circumstances, and much more on his own potential.
The term “everyday” itself appears in the modern era thanks to M. Montaigne, who uses it to designate ordinary, standard, convenient moments of existence for a person, repeated at every moment of an everyday performance. According to his fair remark, everyday troubles are never minor. The will to live is the basis of wisdom. Life is given to us as something that does not depend on us. To dwell on its negative aspects (death, sorrows, illnesses) means to suppress and deny life. The sage should strive to suppress and reject any arguments against life and should say an unconditional “yes” to life and everything that life consists of - sorrow, illness and death.
In the 19th century from an attempt to rationally comprehend everyday life they move on to considering its irrational component: fears, hopes, deep-seated human needs. Man's suffering, according to S. Kierkegaard, is rooted in constant fear that haunts him at every moment of his life. Those who are mired in sin are afraid of possible punishment; those who are freed from sin are gnawed by the fear of a new fall. However, a person chooses his own existence.
A gloomy, pessimistic view of human life is presented in the works of A. Schopenhauer. The essence of human existence is will, a blind onslaught that excites and reveals the universe. Man is driven by an insatiable thirst, accompanied by constant anxiety, need and suffering. According to Schopenhauer, out of seven days of the week, six we suffer and lust, and on the seventh we die of boredom. In addition, a person is characterized by a narrow perception of the world around him. He notes that it is human nature to penetrate beyond the boundaries of the universe.
In the 20th century The main object of scientific knowledge becomes the person himself in his uniqueness and originality. V. Dilthey, M. Heidegger, N. A. Berdyaev and others point to the inconsistency and ambiguity of human nature.
During this period, the “ontological” problems of human life come to the fore, and the phenomenological method becomes a special “prism” through which vision, comprehension and cognition of reality, including social reality, is carried out.
In the philosophy of life (A. Bergson, V. Dilthey, G. Simmel), the emphasis is placed on the non-rational structures of consciousness in human life, his nature and instincts are taken into account, that is, a person is given back his right to spontaneity and naturalness. Thus, A. Bergson writes that of all things we are most confident and know best our own existence.
In the works of G. Simmel there is a negative assessment of everyday life. For him, the routine of everyday life is contrasted with adventure as a period of the highest tension of strength and acuteness of experience; the moment of adventure exists, as it were, independently of everyday life, it is a separate fragment of space-time, where other laws and evaluation criteria apply.
E. Husserl turned to everyday life as an independent problem within the framework of phenomenology. For him, the everyday world becomes a universe of meanings. The everyday world has an internal orderliness and a unique cognitive meaning. Thanks to E. Husserl, everyday life acquired in the eyes of philosophers the status of an independent reality of fundamental importance. E. Husserl's everyday life is distinguished by the simplicity of his understanding of what is “visible” to him. All people proceed from a natural attitude that unites objects and phenomena, things and living beings, factors of a socio-historical nature. Based on a natural attitude, a person perceives the world as the only true reality. The entire daily life of people is based on a natural attitude. The lifeworld is given directly. This is an area known to everyone. The life world always refers to the subject. This is his own everyday world. It is subjective and presented in the form of practical goals, life practice.
M. Heidegger made a great contribution to the study of everyday problems. He already categorically separates scientific life from everyday life. Everyday life is an extra-scientific space of one’s own existence. The daily life of a person is filled with worries about reproducing himself in the world as a living being, and not as a thinking one. The world of everyday life requires the tireless repetition of necessary worries (M. Heidegger called this an unworthy level of existence), which suppress the creative impulses of the individual. Heideggerian everyday life is presented in the form of the following modes: “chatter,” “ambiguity,” “curiosity,” “anxious arrangement,” etc. So, for example, “chatter” is presented in the form of empty, groundless speech. These modes are far from truly human, and therefore everyday life is somewhat negative in nature, and the everyday world as a whole appears as a world of inauthenticity, groundlessness, loss and publicity. Heidegger notes that a person is constantly accompanied by a preoccupation with the present, which turns human life into fearful troubles, into the vegetation of everyday life. This concern is aimed at existing objects, at transforming the world. According to M. Heidegger, a person tries to give up his freedom, to become like everyone else, which leads to the homogenization of individuality. Man no longer belongs to himself; others have taken away his existence. However, despite these negative aspects of everyday life, a person constantly strives to hold onto cash and avoid death. He refuses to see death in his daily life, blocking life itself from it.
This approach is aggravated and developed by pragmatists (C. Pierce, W. James), according to whom consciousness is the experience of a person’s being in the world. Most of the practical affairs of people are aimed at obtaining personal benefit. According to W. James, everyday life is expressed in the elements of an individual’s life pragmatics.
In the instrumentalism of D. Dewey, the concept of experience, nature and existence is far from idyllic. The world is unstable, and existence is risky and unstable. The actions of living beings are unpredictable, and therefore maximum responsibility and exertion of spiritual and intellectual strength are required from any person.
Psychoanalysis also pays sufficient attention to the problems of everyday life. Thus, S. Freud writes about the neuroses of everyday life, that is, the factors that cause them. Sexuality and aggression, suppressed due to social norms, lead a person to neuroses, which in everyday life manifest themselves in the form of obsessive actions, rituals, slips of the tongue, slips of the tongue, and dreams that are understandable only to the person himself. S. Freud called this “the psychopathology of everyday life.” The more a person is forced to suppress his desires, the more defense techniques he uses in everyday life. Freud classifies repression, projection, substitution, rationalization, reactive formation, regression, sublimation, and denial as methods by which nervous tension can be extinguished. Culture, according to Freud, gave a lot to man, but took away from him the most important thing - the opportunity to satisfy his needs.
According to A. Adler, life cannot be imagined without continuous movement in the direction of growth and development. A person’s lifestyle includes a unique combination of traits, modes of behavior, and habits, which, taken together, determine a unique picture of a person’s existence. From Adler's point of view, the lifestyle is firmly established at the age of four or five years and subsequently is almost resistant to total changes. This style becomes the main core of behavior in the future. It determines which aspects of life we will pay attention to and which we will ignore. Ultimately, only the person himself is responsible for his lifestyle.
Within the framework of postmodernism, it was shown that the life of a modern person has not become more stable and reliable. During this period, it became especially noticeable that human activity is carried out not so much on the basis of the principle of expediency, but rather on the randomness of appropriate reactions in the context of specific changes. Within the framework of postmodernism (J.-F. Lyotard, J. Baudrillard, J. Bataille) the opinion is defended that it is legitimate to consider everyday life from any position in order to obtain a complete picture. Everyday life is not the subject of philosophical analysis in this direction, capturing only individual moments of human existence. The mosaic nature of the picture of everyday life in postmodernism testifies to the equivalence of the most diverse phenomena of human existence. Human behavior is largely determined by the consumption function. Moreover, it is not human needs that are the basis for the production of goods, but, on the contrary, the machine of production and consumption produces needs. Outside the system of exchange and consumption there is neither subject nor objects. The language of things classifies the world even before it is represented in ordinary language, the paradigmatization of objects sets the paradigm of communication, interaction in the market serves as the basic matrix of linguistic interaction. There are no individual needs and desires; desires are produced. All-accessibility and permissiveness dulls sensations, and a person can only reproduce ideals, values, etc., pretending that this has not happened yet.
However, there are also positive aspects. A post-modern person is focused on communication and goal-setting aspiration, that is, the main task of a post-modern person, located in a chaotic, inexpedient, sometimes dangerous world, is the need to reveal himself at all costs.
Existentialists believe that problems arise in the daily life of each individual. Everyday life is not only a “knocked-out” existence, repeating stereotypical rituals, but also shocks, disappointments, and passions. They exist precisely in the everyday world. Death, shame, fear, love, the search for meaning, being the most important existential problems, are also problems of the existence of the individual. Among existentialists, the most common pessimistic view of everyday life.
Thus, J.P. Sartre put forward the idea of absolute freedom and absolute loneliness of a person among other people. He believes that it is the individual who is responsible for the fundamental project of his life. Any failure and failure is a consequence of a freely chosen path, and it is futile to look for those to blame. Even if a person finds himself in a war, this war is his, since he could completely avoid it through suicide or desertion.
A. Camus endows everyday life with the following characteristics: absurdity, meaninglessness, disbelief in God and individual immortality, while placing enormous responsibility on the person himself for his life.
A more optimistic point of view was held by E. Fromm, who endowed human life with unconditional meaning, A. Schweitzer and X. Ortega y Gasset, who wrote that life is cosmic altruism, it exists as a constant movement from the vital Self to the Other. These philosophers preached admiration for life and love for it, altruism as a life principle, emphasizing the brightest sides of human nature. E. Fromm also talks about two main ways of human existence – possession and being. The principle of possession is an attitude towards mastering material objects, people, one’s own self, ideas and habits. Being is opposed to possessing and means true participation in what exists and the embodiment in reality of all one’s abilities.
The implementation of the principles of being and possession is observed in examples of everyday life: conversation, memory, power, faith, love, etc. Signs of possession are inertia, stereotyping, superficiality. E. Fromm considers activity, creativity, and interest to be signs of being. In the modern world, a possession mindset is more typical. This is due to the existence of private property. Existence cannot be conceived without struggle and suffering, and a person never realizes himself in a perfect way.
The leading representative of hermeneutics, G. G. Gadamer, pays great attention to human life experience. He believes that the natural desire of parents is to pass on their experience to their children in the hope of protecting them from their own mistakes. However, life experience is an experience that a person must acquire on his own. We constantly come to new experiences through the refutation of old experiences, because these are, first of all, painful and unpleasant experiences that go against our expectations. However, genuine experience prepares a person to realize his own limitations, that is, the limits of human existence. The belief that everything can be remade, that there is a time for everything and that everything repeats itself in one way or another turns out to be just an appearance. Rather, it’s the other way around: a living and active person is constantly convinced in history from his own experience that nothing repeats itself. All the expectations and plans of finite beings are themselves finite and limited. Genuine experience is thus the experience of its own historicity.
A historical and philosophical analysis of everyday life allows us to draw the following conclusions regarding the development of problems of everyday life. Firstly, the problem of everyday life is posed quite clearly, but a huge number of definitions do not give a holistic idea of the essence of this phenomenon.
Secondly, most philosophers emphasize the negative aspects of everyday life. Thirdly, within the framework of modern science and in line with such disciplines as sociology, psychology, anthropology, history, etc., studies of everyday life concern primarily its applied aspects, while its essential content remains outside the field of view of most researchers.
It is the socio-philosophical approach that allows us to systematize the historical analysis of everyday life, determine its essence, systemic and structural content and integrity. Let us note right away that all the basic concepts that reveal everyday life, its basic foundations, one way or another, in one form or another, are present in historical analysis in disparate versions, in different terms. We have only tried in the historical part to consider the essential, meaningful and holistic existence of everyday life. Without delving into the analysis of such a complex formation as the concept of life, we emphasize that the appeal to it as the initial one is dictated not only by philosophical trends such as pragmatism, philosophy of life, fundamental ontology, but also by the semantics of the very words of everyday life: for all days of life from its eternal and temporary characteristics.
We can distinguish the main spheres of a person’s life: his professional work, everyday activities and the sphere of recreation (unfortunately, often understood only as inactivity). It is obvious that the essence of life is movement, activity. It is all the features of social and individual activity in a dialectical relationship that determine the essence of everyday life. But it is clear that the pace and nature of activity, its effectiveness, success or failure are determined by inclinations, skills and, mainly, abilities (everyday life of an artist, poet, scientist, musician, etc. varies significantly).
If activity is considered as a fundamental attribute of being from the point of view of the self-motion of reality, then in each specific case we will be dealing with a relatively independent system that functions on the basis of self-regulation and self-government. But this naturally presupposes not only the presence of methods of activity (abilities), but also the need for sources of movement and activity. These sources are most often (and mainly) determined by the contradictions between the subject and the object of activity. The subject can also act as an object of one or another activity. This contradiction boils down to the fact that the subject strives to take possession of the object or part of it that he needs. These contradictions are defined as needs: the need of an individual, a group of people or society as a whole. It is the needs in various modified, transformed forms (interests, motives, goals, etc.) that bring the subject into action. Self-organization and self-management of the system’s activities presupposes as necessary a sufficiently developed understanding, awareness, adequate knowledge (that is, the presence of consciousness and self-awareness) of the activity itself, abilities, and needs, and awareness of consciousness and self-awareness itself. All this is transformed into adequate and specific goals, organizes the necessary means and gives the subject the opportunity to foresee the appropriate results.
So, all this allows us to consider everyday life from these four positions (activity, need, consciousness, ability): the defining sphere of everyday life - professional activity; human activity in everyday life; recreation as a unique sphere of activity in which these four elements are freely, spontaneously, intuitively, outside of purely practical interests, playfully (based on play activities).
We can draw some conclusions. From the previous analysis it follows that everyday life must be defined based on the concept of life, the essence of which (including everyday life) is hidden in activity, and the content of everyday life (for all days!) is revealed in a detailed analysis of the specifics of the social and individual characteristics of the identified four elements. The integrity of everyday life is hidden in the harmonization, on the one hand, of all its spheres (professional activities, everyday activities and leisure), and on the other, within each of the spheres based on the originality of the four designated elements. And finally, we note that all these four elements have been identified, highlighted and are already present in the historical, social and philosophical analysis. The category of life is present among representatives of the philosophy of life (M. Montaigne, A. Schopenhauer, W. Dilthey, E. Husserl); the concept of “activity” is present in the movements of pragmatism and instrumentalism (in C. Peirce, W. James, D. Dewey); the concept of “need” dominates among K. Marx, Z. Freud, postmodernists, etc.; The concept of “ability” is addressed by W. Dilthey, G. Simmel, K. Marx and others, and, finally, we find consciousness as a synthesizing organ in K. Marx, E. Husserl, representatives of pragmatism and existentialism.
Thus, it is this approach that allows us to define the phenomenon of everyday life as a socio-philosophical category, to reveal the essence, content and integrity of this phenomenon.
Morality is the desire of an individual to evaluate conscious actions and human states on the basis of a set of conscious norms of behavior inherent in a particular individual. The expression of the ideas of a morally developed person is conscience. These are the deep laws of a decent human life. Morality is an individual’s idea of evil and good, the ability to competently assess the situation and determine the typical style of behavior in it. Each individual has his own criteria of morality. It forms a certain code of relations with a person and the environment as a whole, based on mutual understanding and humanism.
What is morality
Morality is an integral characteristic of the individual, which is the cognitive basis for the formation of a morally healthy personality: socially oriented, adequately assessing the situation, having an established set of values. In today's society, the definition of morality is in general use as a synonym for the concept of morality. The etymological features of this concept show its origin from the word “character” - character. The first semantic definition of the concept of morality was published in 1789 - “Dictionary of the Russian Academy”.
The concept of morality combines a certain set of personality qualities of the subject. What is paramount is honesty, kindness, compassion, decency, hard work, generosity, and reliability. Analyzing morality as a personal property, it should be mentioned that everyone is able to bring their own qualities to this concept. For people with different types of professions, morality is formed by a different set of qualities. A soldier must be brave, a fair judge, a teacher. Based on the formed moral qualities, the directions of behavior of the subject in society are formed. The subjective attitude of the individual plays a significant role in assessing the situation from a moral perspective. Some people perceive civil marriage as absolutely natural; for others it is considered a sin. Based on religious studies, it should be recognized that the concept of morality has retained very little of its true meaning. Modern man's idea of morality is distorted and emasculated.
Morality is a purely individual quality, which allows a person to consciously control his own mental and emotional state, personifying a spiritually and socially formed personality. A moral person is able to determine the golden standard between the self-centered part of himself and sacrifice. Such a subject is able to form a socially oriented, value-determined civic and worldview.
A moral person, when choosing the direction of his actions, acts solely according to his conscience, relying on formed personal values and concepts. For some, the concept of morality is the equivalent of a “ticket to heaven” after death, but in life it is something that does not particularly affect the success of the subject and does not bring any benefit. For this type of people, moral behavior is a way to cleanse the soul of sins, as if covering up their own wrong actions. Man is an unhindered being in his choice, he has his own course in life. At the same time, society has its own influence and is able to set its own ideals and values.
In fact, morality, as a property necessary for the subject, is extremely important for society. This is, as it were, a guarantee of the preservation of humanity as a species, otherwise, without norms and principles of moral behavior, humanity will eradicate itself. Arbitrariness and gradualism are the consequences of the disappearance of morality as a set of principles and values of society as such. The death of a certain nation or ethnic group is most likely if it is headed by an immoral government. Accordingly, the level of living comfort of people depends on developed morality. A protected and prosperous society is one in which values and moral principles are respected, respect and altruism come first.
So, morality is internalized principles and values, based on which a person directs his behavior and performs actions. Morality, being a form of social knowledge and attitudes, regulates human actions through principles and norms. These norms are directly based on the point of view of the impeccable, the categories of good, justice and evil. Based on humanistic values, morality allows the subject to be human.
Rules of morality
In everyday use, the expressions morality have identical meaning and common origins. At the same time, everyone should determine the existence of certain rules that easily outline the essence of each of the concepts. Thus, moral rules, in turn, allow the individual to develop his own mental and moral state. To some extent, these are the “Laws of the Absolute” that exist in absolutely all religions, worldviews and societies. Consequently, moral rules are universal, and their failure to comply entails consequences for the subject who does not comply with them.
There are, for example, 10 commandments received as a result of direct communication between Moses and God. This is part of the rules of morality, the observance of which is justified by religion. In fact, scientists do not deny the presence of a hundred times more rules; they boil down to one denominator: the harmonious existence of humanity.
Since ancient times, many peoples have had the concept of a certain “Golden Rule”, which carries the basis of morality. Its interpretation includes dozens of formulations, but the essence remains unchanged. Following this “golden rule,” an individual should behave towards others the way he treats himself. This rule forms the concept of a person that all people are equal regarding their freedom of action, as well as the desire to develop. Following this rule, the subject reveals its deep philosophical interpretation, which states that the individual must learn in advance to realize the consequences of his own actions in relation to the “other individual”, projecting these consequences onto himself. That is, a subject who mentally tries on the consequences of his own action will think about whether it is worth acting in such a direction. The Golden Rule teaches a person to develop his inner sense, teaches compassion, empathy and helps to develop mentally.
Although this moral rule was formulated in ancient times by famous teachers and thinkers, it has not lost the relevance of its purpose in the modern world. “What you don’t want for yourself, don’t do to someone else” – this is how the rule sounds in its original interpretation. The emergence of such an interpretation is attributed to the origins of the first millennium BC. It was then that a humanistic revolution took place in the ancient world. But as a moral rule, it received its “golden” status in the eighteenth century. This injunction emphasizes the global moral principle according to the relationship to another person within various interaction situations. Since its presence in any existing religion has been proven, it can be noted as the foundation of human morality. This is the most important truth of the humanistic behavior of a moral person.
The problem of morality
Looking at modern society, it is easy to notice that moral development is characterized by decline. In the twentieth century, the world experienced a sudden decline in all laws and moral values of society. Moral problems began to appear in society, which negatively affected the formation and development of humane humanity. This decline reached an even greater development in the twenty-first century. Throughout human existence, many moral problems have been noted, which in one way or another had a negative impact on the individual. Guided by spiritual guidelines in different eras, people put something of their own into the concept of morality. They were capable of doing things that in modern society terrify absolutely every sane person. For example, the Egyptian pharaohs, who were afraid of losing their kingdom, committed unthinkable crimes, killing all newborn boys. Moral norms are rooted in religious laws, adherence to which shows the essence of the human personality. Honor, dignity, faith, love for the homeland, for man, loyalty - qualities that served as the direction in human life, to which part of the laws of God reached at least to some extent. Consequently, throughout its development, society tended to deviate from religious commandments, which led to the emergence of moral problems.
The development of moral problems in the twentieth century is a consequence of the world wars. The era of decline in morals has been going on since the First World War; during this crazy time, human life became devalued. The conditions in which people had to survive erased all moral restrictions, personal relationships devalued just like human life at the front. The involvement of humanity in inhumane bloodshed dealt a crushing blow to morality.
One of the periods when moral problems appeared was the communist period. During this period, it was planned to destroy all religions, and, accordingly, the moral norms embedded in it. Even if in the Soviet Union the development of moral rules was much higher, this position could not be maintained for long. Along with the destruction of the Soviet world, there was a decline in the morality of society.
In the current period, one of the main problems of morality is the fall of the family institution. Which brings with it a demographic catastrophe, an increase in divorces, and the birth of countless children out of wedlock. Views on the family, motherhood and fatherhood, and raising a healthy child are regressing. The development of corruption in all areas, theft, and deception is of certain importance. Now everything is bought, exactly as it is sold: diplomas, victories in sports, even human honor. This is precisely the consequences of the decline in morality.
Education of morality
Moral education is a process of purposeful influence on a person, which implies an impact on the consciousness of the subject’s behavior and feelings. During the period of such education, the moral qualities of the subject are formed, allowing the individual to act within the framework of public morality.
Education of morality is a process that does not involve breaks, but only close interaction between the student and the teacher. You should cultivate moral qualities in a child by your own example. Forming a moral personality is quite difficult; it is a painstaking process in which not only teachers and parents, but also the public institution as a whole take part. In this case, the age characteristics of the individual, his readiness for analysis, and processing of information are always taken into account. The result of moral education is the development of a holistically moral personality, which will develop together with its feelings, conscience, habits and values. Such education is considered a difficult and multifaceted process, summarizing pedagogical education and the influence of society. Moral education implies the formation of a sense of morality, a conscious connection with society, a culture of behavior, consideration of moral ideals and concepts, principles and behavioral norms.
Moral education takes place during the period of education, during upbringing in the family, in public organizations, and directly involves individuals. The continuous process of moral education begins with the birth of the subject and lasts throughout his life.
CONCLUSION.
THE MORAL MEANING OF LIFE IN ITS FINAL DEFINITION
AND THE TRANSITION TO THEORETICAL PHILOSOPHY
Our life receives moral meaning and dignity when there is established between it and the perfect Good. improving connection. According to the very concept of perfect Good, all life and all being are connected with it and in this connection have their own meaning. Is there no meaning in animal life, in its nutrition and reproduction? But this undoubted and important meaning, expressing only the involuntary and partial connection of an individual being with the general good, cannot fill a person’s life: his reason and will, as forms of the infinite, require something else. The spirit is nourished by the knowledge of perfect Good and multiplied by its doing, that is, by the implementation of the universal and unconditional in all particular and conditional relations. Internally demanding perfect union with the absolute Good, we show that what is required has not yet been given to us and, therefore, the moral meaning of our life can only consist in that achieve until this perfect connection with the Good or so that improve our existing internal connection with him.
In the request for moral perfection, the general idea of absolute Good is already given - its necessary characteristics. It must be comprehensive or contain the norm of our moral attitude towards everything. Everything that exists and that can exist is morally exhausted by three categories of dignity: we deal either with what is above us, or with what is equal to us, or with what is below us. It is logically impossible to find anything else fourth. According to the internal evidence of consciousness, the unconditional Good is above us, or God and everything that is already in perfect unity with Him, since we have not yet achieved this unity; Equally with us by nature is everything that is capable, like us, of independent moral improvement, that is on the path to the absolute and can see the goal in front of it, i.e. all human beings; Below us is everything that is not capable of internal self-improvement and that only through us can enter into perfect connection with the absolute, i.e. material nature. This threefold relationship in its most general form is a fact: we are in fact subordinate to the absolute, whatever we call it; in the same way, in fact, we are equal to other people in the basic properties of human nature and are in solidarity with them in a common life destiny through heredity, history and community; in the same way, we actually have significant advantages over the material creation. So, the moral task can only consist in improving the given. The triplicity of the actual relationship must be transformed into a triune norm of rational and volitional activity; fatal submission to a higher power must become a conscious and free service to the perfect Good, natural solidarity with other people must turn into sympathetic and harmonious interaction with them; actual advantage over material nature must be transformed into rational dominion over it for ours and for its good.
The real beginning of moral improvement lies in three basic feelings inherent in human nature and forming its natural virtue: in the feeling shame protecting our highest dignity in relation to the seizures of animal instincts; in feeling pity which internally equalizes us with others, and, finally, in religious feeling, in which affects our recognition of the highest Good. In these feelings representing good nature initially striving for the fact that must(for inseparable from them is the consciousness, even vaguely, of their normality - the consciousness that one should be ashamed of the immensity of carnal desires and slavery to animal nature, that one should feel sorry for others, that one should bow before the Divine, that this is good, and that which is contrary to this is bad), - in these feelings and in the accompanying testimony of conscience lies a single, or, more precisely, a triune basis for moral improvement. A conscientious mind, generalizing the motives of a good nature, elevates them to law. The content of the moral law is the same as that given in good feelings, but only clothed in the form of a universal and necessary (mandatory) requirement or command. The moral law grows from the testimony of conscience, just as conscience itself is a feeling of shame, developed not from the material, but only from its formal side.
Regarding the lower nature, the moral law, generalizing the immediate feeling of modesty, commands us to always dominate all sensual attractions, allowing them only as a subordinate element within the limits of reason; here morality is no longer expressed (as in the elementary feeling of shame) by a simple, instinctive repulsion of a hostile element, or retreat before it, but requires real struggle with flesh. – In relation to other people, the moral law gives the feeling of Pity, or sympathy, a form of justice, requiring that we recognize for each of our neighbors the same unconditional importance as for ourselves, or treat others as we could without contradiction wish, so that they relate to us, regardless of one feeling or another. – Finally, in relation to the Divine, the moral law asserts itself as the expression of His legislative will and demands its unconditional recognition for the sake of its own unconditional dignity or perfection. But for a person who has achieved this pure recognition of God's will as the all-one and complete Good itself, it should be clear that completeness this will can open only by the power of its own, inner actions V human soul. Having reached this peak, formal or rational morality enters the realm of absolute morality - the good of the rational law is filled with the good of the divine grace.
According to the everlasting teaching of true Christianity, consistent with the essence of the matter, grace does not destroy nature and natural morality, but “perfects” it, i.e. brings to perfection, and in the same way, grace does not abolish the law, but fulfills it and only in force and, to the extent of actual execution, makes it unnecessary.
But the fulfillment of the moral principle (by nature and by law) cannot be limited to the personal life of an individual for two reasons - natural and moral. The natural reason is that man individually does not exist at all, and this reason would be quite sufficient from a practical point of view, but for strong moralists, for whom it is not existence that is important, but obligation, there is also a moral reason - the discrepancy between the concept of the individual, disconnected from all man and the concept of perfection. So, on natural and moral grounds, the process of improvement, which constitutes the moral meaning of our life, can only be thought of as a collective process, occurring in a collective person, that is, in a family, people, humanity. These three types of collective man do not replace, but mutually support and complement each other and, each in their own way, move towards perfection. The family is being improved, spiritualizing and perpetuating the meaning of the personal past in a moral connection with ancestors, the meaning of the personal present in a true marriage and the meaning of the personal future in raising new generations. The people are improving, deepening and expanding their natural solidarity with other peoples in the sense of moral communication. Humanity is improving by organizing goodness in the general forms of religious, political and socio-economic culture, more and more consistent with the final goal - to make humanity ready for an unconditional moral order, or the Kingdom of God; religious goodness, or piety, is organized in the church, which must improve its human side, making it more and more consistent with the Divine side; human goodness, or just pity, is organized in the state, which is being improved, expanding the area of truth and mercy regarding arbitrariness and violence within the people and between peoples; finally, the good physical or moral attitude of a person towards material nature in an economic union, the perfection of which is not in the accumulation of things, but in the spiritualization of matter as a condition for normal and eternal physical existence.
With the constant interaction of personal moral achievement and the organized moral work of a collective person, the moral meaning of life, or the Good, receives its final justification, appearing in all its purity, completeness and strength. The mental reproduction of this process in its totality - both following history in what has already been achieved, and preceding it in what remains to be done - is the moral philosophy expounded in this book. Bringing all its contents to in one expression, we will find that the perfection of Good is finally determined as the indivisible organization of triune love. The feeling of reverence, or piety, first through fearful and involuntary, and then through free filial submission to a higher principle, having cognized its object as infinite perfection, turns into pure, comprehensive and boundless love for him, conditioned only by the recognition of his absoluteness - rising love. But, in accordance with its all-encompassing object, this love embraces everything else in God, and above all those who can participate in it on an equal basis with us, i.e. human beings; here our physical, and then moral and political pity for people becomes spiritual love for them, or equation in love. But divine love, assimilated by man as all-embracing, cannot stop here either; becoming descending love, it also acts on material nature, introducing it into the fullness of absolute goodness, like a living throne of divine glory.
When this is a universal justification of good, i.e. its extension to all life relations will become, in fact, historically clear to every mind, then for each individual person there will only remain the practical question of the will: to accept for oneself such a perfect moral meaning of life or to reject it. But while the end, although close, has not yet come, until the rightness of good has become an obvious fact in everything and for everyone, a theoretical doubt is still possible, insoluble within the limits of moral or practical philosophy, although in no way undermining the binding nature of its rules for people of good will.
If the moral meaning of life is essentially reduced to the all-round struggle and triumph of good over evil, then the eternal question arises: where does this evil itself come from? If it is from good, then isn’t the struggle with it a misunderstanding; if it has its beginning apart from good, then how can good be unconditional, having outside itself a condition for its implementation? If it is not unconditional, then what is its fundamental advantage and the final guarantee of its triumph over evil?
Reasonable faith in absolute Good is based on internal experience and on what follows from it with logical necessity. But internal religious experience is a personal matter and, from an external point of view, conditional. Therefore, when rational faith based on it passes into general theoretical statements, it is required to provide theoretical justification.
The question of the origin of evil is purely mental and can only be resolved by true metaphysics, which in turn presupposes the solution of another question: what is truth, what is its reliability and how is it known?
The independence of moral philosophy in its own field does not exclude the internal connection of this field itself with the subjects of theoretical philosophy - the doctrine of knowledge and metaphysics.
It is least fitting for believers in the absolute Good to be afraid of philosophical investigation of truth, as if the moral meaning of the world could lose something from its final explanation and as if union with God in love and agreement with the will of God in life could leave us uninvolved in the Divine mind. Having justified the Good as such in moral philosophy, we must justify the Good as Truth in theoretical philosophy.
APPLICATION.
THE FORMAL PRINCIPLE OF MORALITY (KANT) – EXPOSURE AND EVALUATION WITH CRITICAL REMARKS ON EMPIRICAL ETHICS
I
The task of philosophical ethics cannot consist only in expressing in a brief formula the total number of moral actions, then ascertaining their reality and, finally, reducing them to one fundamental fact, which in the prevailing systems of empirical ethics recognizes the fact of sympathy or compassion. That there are just and humane actions and that their internal natural basis lies in compassion or sympathy - simple everyday experience and ordinary common sense are enough to convince oneself of this; therefore, the philosophical study of morality cannot have only this task. It does not require stating these well-known and undoubted facts, and their explanations.
In fact, we are given two types of human activity. One of them, namely the one in which the good of others is meant, we recognize as morally good, should be, that is, normal; the other, precisely the one in which our exclusive good is meant, we recognize, on the contrary, as morally bad, improper, or abnormal. This is the real thingDatum ethics, Φti , – what is to be explained; Quaesitum its, that is, the required explanation of this given, this fact, must obviously consist in showing the rational, internally obligatory basis for such an actual distinction, that is, showing Why The first kind of activity is what should be, or normal, but the second is not. This is the real thing dioti – Why ethics.
The very empirical basis of ethics, the closest source of moral activity - compassion is again only fact human nature. The same and even more powerful fact is egoism - the source of antimoral activity. If, therefore, both activities are equally based on the fundamental facts of human nature, then it is not yet clear why one of them is normal and the other abnormal. A fact in itself, or as such, can be neither better nor worse than another.
Since egoism, or the desire for exclusive self-affirmation, is the same immediate property of our mental nature as the opposite feeling of sympathy or altruism, then from the point of view of human nature (empirically given), egoism or altruism, as two equally real properties of this nature, are completely are equal in rights, and, consequently, that morality, which knows nothing higher than existing human nature, cannot give a rational justification for the advantage that is actually given to one property and the activity arising from it over another.
But, they say, there is no need for any rational justification, no theoretical justification for a moral principle. The immediate moral feeling or intuitive distinction between good and evil inherent in man is sufficient; in other words, morality as an instinct is sufficient; there is no need for morality as a rational conviction. Not to mention the fact that such a statement is obviously not an answer to the main theoretical question of ethics, but a simple denial of this question itself; in addition, the reference to instinct in this case is devoid of even practical meaning. For it is known that for humans, general instincts do not at all have that unconditional, life-determining meaning that they undoubtedly have for other animals, which are under the unlimited power of these instincts, which does not allow any evasion. In some of these animals we find a particularly strong development of the social or altruistic instinct, and in this respect man is far inferior to, for example, bees and ants. In general, if we keep in mind only direct or instinctive morality, then we must admit that most of the lower animals are much more moral than humans. Such a proverb as “a raven cannot peck out a crow’s eye” has no analogy in humanity. Even the general public of man is not a direct consequence of the social instinct in the moral altruistic sense; on the contrary, for the most part this external community, in its mental source, is rather anti-moral and anti-social in nature, being based on general hostility and struggle, on the violent and illegal enslavement and exploitation of some by others; where the public actually represents a moral character, this has other, higher grounds than natural instinct.
In any case, morality based on direct feeling, on instinct, can only take place in those animals in which the abdominal nervous system (which forms the closest material lining of immediate, or instinctive, mental life) decisively prevails over the cephalic nervous system (which forms the material lining of consciousness and reflection); but since in humans (especially in the male sex), unfortunately or fortunately, we see the opposite phenomenon, namely the decisive predominance of the cerebral nerve centers over the abdominal ones, as a result of which the element of consciousness and rational reflection necessarily enters into his moral definitions, then thereby exclusively instinctive morality turns out to be unsuitable for him.
This intuitive or instinctive morality itself refuses any mental significance, since in its very principle it denies the main mental requirement of ethics - to give a reasonable explanation or justification for the basic moral fact, and recognizes only this fact in its immediate, empirical existence. But, on the other hand, as has now been shown, this morality cannot have practical, real meaning due to the weakness of a person’s moral instincts(corresponding to the relatively small development of his abdominal nerve centers and the abdominal part in general). But if, therefore, this intuitive morality can have neither mental interest nor practical force, then, obviously, it cannot have independent meaning at all, but must be accepted only as an indication of that instinctive or immediate side that exists in any moral activity, although it does not have a determining force in a person for the reasons indicated.
So, leaving this immediate or instinctive morality ad usum bestiarum , to whom it rightfully belongs, we must look for a reasonable basis for human morality. The main newest representative of the doctrine being analyzed, Schopenhauer, also agrees with this, who turns to some speculative idea to reinforce his empirical principle.
That which exists in itself Ding an sich , or metaphysical essence, inseparable, one and identical in everything and in everyone, while the plurality, separateness and alienation of beings and things, defined principle individuationis , that is, the beginning of separation, exist only in phenomenon or representation according to the law of causality, realized in matter, in the conditions of space and time. Thus, sympathy and the moral activity flowing from it, in which one being is identified or internally united with another, thereby affirms the metaphysical unity of beings, while, on the contrary, egoism and the activity flowing from it, in which one being relates to another as completely separate and alien from it, corresponds only to the physical law of the phenomenon. But what follows from this? The fact that the fact of sympathy expresses the substantial identity of beings, and the opposite fact of egoism expresses their phenomenal multiplicity and separateness, does not yet constitute the objective advantage of one over the other; for this phenomenal multiplicity and separateness of beings is absolutely as necessary as their substantial unity. It is logically clear that all beings are necessarily identical in substance and just as necessarily separate in appearance; these are only two sides of the same being, which, as such, do not have any objective advantage over one another. If these two sides excluded each other, then, of course, only one of them could be true, and the other would necessarily be false, but thereby this latter would also be impossible. This would be the case if it were a question of applying two opposing predicates, such as unity and plurality, to to the same subject in the same attitude; then, according to the logical law of identity, a dilemma would occur, i.e. one would have to recognize one of the predicates as true and the other as false. But since in our case unity and plurality are affirmed not in the same relation, but in different ones, namely unity in relation to substance, and multiplicity in relation to phenomenon, their exclusivity is thereby denied, and the dilemma does not exist.
In addition to this logical consideration, the very reality of both sides of existence shows that they are generally compatible; and therefore, if, as a result of the necessary law of historical development, various religious and philosophical teachings alternately stop at substantial unity, then at phenomenal multiplicity, sacrificing one to the other, then this is an error that is historically necessary, but not unconditional. From the fact that the human mind had to go through this error, it does not follow that it should remain with it.
Of course, the logical and physical compatibility of universalism and individualism, sympathy and egoism does not exclude the moral inequality of these two principles.
But in order to affirm positively such inequality, it is necessary to show what it lies in what is the internal advantage of one over the other. In order to show the falsity or internal inconsistency of egoism, it is not enough to assert, like Schopenhauer, that every peculiarity, as existing only in imagination, is a ghost and a deception, that principium individuationis (the beginning of the singularity) is the cover of Maya, etc.; for such statements are either figurative expressions without a definite logical content, or they say too much a lot of. Namely: if the world of multiple phenomena is a ghost and a deception because it is a representation, and not Ding an sich , and representation determines both the object and the subject (that is, by the correlation of these two terms, the subject, as such, is possible only in representation), then in this case both the acting subject and those in whose favor he morally acts , are only a ghost and a deception, and therefore the moral activity itself, which strives to confirm the ghostly existence of other subjects, is a ghost and deception no less than the opposite egoistic activity, which strives to affirm the ghostly existence of the actor himself.
Thus, from this metaphysical point of view, moral activity is no better, no truer or more normal than immoral or egoistic activity. When you, out of compassion, help someone, save someone from danger, do a good deed, you are affirming the individual, special existence of this other subject, you want him, as such, to exist and be happy - he, this individual, and not the all-united a metaphysical entity that cannot need our help. Consequently, moral activity, which generally strives to affirm and develop the individual existence of all beings in their plurality, thereby, according to Schopenhauer’s concepts, strives to affirm the ghost and deception, therefore, it is abnormal, and, thus, the metaphysical idea of monism instead in order to justify morality, he turns against it. And from this it follows that we must look for other rational grounds for ethics.
Consideration of the generally accepted formula of the moral principle of action to which Schopenhauer refers will lead us to the same conclusion, namely: do not harm anyone, but help everyone as much as you can - neminem laede imo omnes, quantum potes, juva . This supreme moral rule is not limited to the negative requirement “do not harm anyone,” but also contains the positive requirement “help everyone,” i.e. it requires from us not only that we ourselves do not inflict suffering on others, but also mainly that we free others from all suffering, not caused by us, not dependent on us. This is only a feeling of sympathy or compassion raised to a principle, and since there can be no internal limitation here (for here, obviously, the more the better, the limitation quantum pots , “as much as you can,” refers only to the physical ability to perform, and not to the moral will), then the final meaning of this positive moral principle, indicating the final goal of normal practical activity and the highest moral good, or goodness, can be more accurately and more definitely expressed as follows: strive for the liberation of all beings from all suffering, or from suffering as such.
But in order for this requirement to have real meaning, it is obviously necessary to know what the essence of suffering is and how it is possible to get rid of it.
Suffering in general occurs when the actual states of a known being are determined by something external, alien and disgusting to it. We suffer when the inner movement of our will cannot achieve fulfillment or fulfillment, when aspiration and reality, what we want and what we experience, do not coincide and do not correspond. So, suffering consists in the dependence of our will on an external existence alien to it, in the fact that this will does not have in itself the conditions for its satisfaction.
To suffer means to be determined by another, external, therefore, the basis of suffering for the will lies in its heteronomy(alien legality), and, therefore, the highest, final goal of normal, practical activity is the liberation of the world will, i.e. the will of all beings, from this heteronomy, i.e. from the power of this alien existence.
Thus, the essence of morality is determined autonomy or the self-legitimacy of the will, and the direct task of ethics is to show the possibility of this autonomy, those conditions, under which it can be valid. The definition of these conditions will include an explanation of the basic moral difference between what should and should not, since the normality of moral activity directly depends on the conditions of its self-legitimacy.
Such a task, obviously, lies beyond the boundaries of any empirical ethics, for in experience we know only will, bound by an existence alien to it, manifesting itself according to the laws of necessity external to it, will foreign. Thus, through experience we can only obtain the conditions of heteronomy of the will, therefore, the sought conditions of its autonomy can only be found by pure, or a priori, reason.
The reader familiar with philosophy sees that the concepts of heteronomy of the will and its autonomy, defined a priori , or from pure reason, we suddenly moved into the sphere of Kant's moral ideas. So the last one result empirical or material ethics naturally turns into requirement purely rational or formal ethics, to which we now turn.
II
The empirical, material basis of the moral principle turned out to be insufficient in itself, because, having as its content one of the actual properties of human nature (compassion, or sympathy), it cannot explain this property as general and necessary source normal actions and at the same time cannot give it practical strength and dominance over other, opposite properties. True, the last requirement - to give the moral principle practical force and dominance - can be rejected by a philosophical moralist as being outside the means of philosophy in general. But the first requirement of a reasonable justification or explanation of the moral principle as such, that is, as the beginning of normal actions, must necessarily be fulfilled by ethical teaching, since otherwise it is not visible, in what could be the general purpose of such a teaching?
It is necessary to distinguish ethics as purely empirical knowledge from ethics as a philosophical doctrine. The first can be content with classifying moral facts and indicating their material, factual foundations in human nature. Such ethics forms part of empirical anthropology or psychology and cannot claim any fundamental significance. The same ethics that exposes the famous moral principle, must inevitably show the result of this principle as such.
Empirical morality in all its forms reduces the moral activity of a person to certain aspirations or inclinations that constitute the actual property of his nature, and in In the lower forms of this morality, the main striving, from which all practical actions are derived, has an egoistic character, but in the highest, final form, the main moral striving is determined by the character of altruism, or sympathy.
But any activity based only on a certain natural inclination, as such, cannot have a strictly moral character, that is, it cannot have significance. normal, or should be, activity. Indeed, not to mention those lower expressions of empirical morality, which are not at all able to indicate any permanent and definite difference between normal and abnormal activities, even in the highest expression of empirical ethics, although such a difference is indicated, it is not at all substantiated.
If a person acts morally only insofar as his actions are determined by a natural desire for the good of others, or sympathy, then, recognizing in this sympathy only the natural, actually given inclination of his nature and nothing more, one asks: what does it mean for him, I do not say practical obligation, but a theoretical, objective advantage of such activity over any other? Why won’t he or shouldn’t act in other cases immorally or selfishly, when egoism is the same natural property of his nature as the opposite desire, sympathy? Both types of activity are equally normal, since both have their source equally in the natural properties of man. Meanwhile, in fact, when we act morally, we not only demand from ourselves always and everywhere to act one way and not another, but we make the same demand on all other human beings, without asking at all about certain properties of their nature ; Consequently, we attribute to the moral principle, as such, an unconditional obligation, regardless of whether we currently have in our nature the empirical conditions for the actual implementation of this principle in ourselves or others.
So, the formal moral character of activity, namely its normality, cannot be determined by one or another natural inclination, but must consist in something independent of empirical nature.
In order for a certain type of activity to have a constant and internal advantage over others, it must have signs of universality and necessity, independent of any random empirical data. In other words, this type of activity must be absolutely obligatory for our consciousness.
So, the normality of an action is determined not by its origin from one or another empirical motive, but exclusively by its internal obligation. A moral action becomes such only insofar as it is recognized as duty, those. How the need to act out of sheer respect for the moral law. Only through the concept of duty does morality cease to be an instinct and become a rational conviction.
From what has been said, it is clear that the moral law, as such, that is, as the basis of some obligation, must have absolute necessity in itself, that is, have unconditional significance for all rational beings, and, therefore, the basis of its obligation cannot lie either in the nature of one or the other. another being, for example a person, nor in the conditions of the external world in which these beings are placed; but this foundation must lie in the a priori concepts of pure reason, common to all rational beings. Any other prescription, based on the principles of one experience, can be a practical rule, but can never have the meaning of a moral law.
If the moral dignity of an action is determined by the concept of duty, then, obviously, it is not enough for this action to be only in accordance with or in accordance with the duty, but it is necessary that it be performed from duty, or from the consciousness of duty, for an action that is in itself consistent with duty, but has in the acting subject has another source besides the obligation, thereby devoid of moral value. So, for example, it is a duty to do good deeds whenever possible, but besides this there are those who do this out of simple natural inclination. In this case, their actions, although they cause approval, do not have any actual moral value. For any inclination, as an empirical property, does not have the character of necessity and constancy, can always be replaced by another inclination and even turn into its opposite, and therefore cannot serve as the basis for a universal, or objective, moral principle. In our example, the person who does good deeds out of natural inclination may, due to special personal circumstances, due to, for example, great sorrows and misfortunes, which harden his character and, filling his soul with the consciousness of his own suffering and worries about himself, make him insensitive to suffering and the needs of others, he may, as a result of these circumstances, completely lose his inclination to compassion. But if, despite this, he continues to do good deeds, but now without any inclination, but solely out of obligation, then his actions will receive a true moral value. Moreover, let us imagine a person, although honest, but without any special sympathetic inclinations, cold in temperament and truly indifferent to the suffering of others, not because of the brutality of his moral nature, but perhaps because he himself endures his own suffering with patience and stoic indifference ; such a person, doing good not out of inclination, but out of unconditional moral obligation, will always do it and completely independently of any empirical conditions; Thus, although nature did not create him as a lover of humanity, he will find in himself a source of much greater moral dignity than the dignity of a good temperament.
Further, an action performed out of obligation has its moral dignity not in the goal that is achieved by this action, but in the rule by which this action is determined, or, more precisely, by which the determination for this action is determined. Consequently, this moral dignity does not depend on the reality of the object of the action, but exclusively on principle of will, according to which this action is performed independently of any objects of natural desire.
The will is in the middle between its a priori principle, which is formal, and its empirical motives, which are material. She is between them, as it were, at a crossroads, and since moral will in this capacity cannot be determined by material motives, as having no moral value, and, however, it needs to be determined by something, then, obviously, it has no choice but to obey the formal principle.
Based on the above, the concept of obligation is defined as follows: duty is the necessity of acting out of respect for the moral law. In fact, since the word “respect” ( Achtung ) expresses our attitude towards something recognized as higher, and the moral law, as unconditional and purely rational, is something higher for man, as a limited and sensual being, then Our attitude towards this law should only be in the form of respect. I may have an inclination towards an object, as the result of my own action, but not respect, precisely because it is only a product, and not an activity of the will. In the same way, I cannot have respect for any inclination, my own or someone else’s: I can only approve in the first case, and sometimes love it in the second. Only what is connected with my will as base, and not as an action that does not serve my inclination, but prevails over it as the highest, which excludes it in the choice, i.e. a moral law in itself can be a subject of respect and, therefore, be binding.
If, therefore, action from duty must exclude the influence of inclination, and with it every object of desire, then nothing else remains determining for the will except the law on the objective side and pure respect for this moral law on the subjective side, i.e. rules to follow such a law, even in contradiction to all my inclinations. So, the moral price of an action does not lie in the result expected from it, and therefore not in any beginning of activity that would have this expected result as its motivation, for all these results, reducible to one’s own and others’ good, could be achieved through the action of other causes, besides the will of a rational being, and in this will of a rational being lies the highest and unconditional good. Therefore, moral good can only consist in the representation of the moral law itself, which can only take place in a rational being, since his will is determined by this representation, and not by the intended action, and, therefore, this good is already present in the acting person, and is not just expected as a result of action.
But what kind of law is this, the representation of which, even apart from any expected results, must determine the will so that it can be recognized as unconditionally good in the moral sense? Since we have taken away from the will all empirical motives and all particular laws based on these motives, i.e. deprived the will of all material content, nothing more remains than unconditional pattern action in general, which alone must serve as the principle of the will, that is, I must always act in this way, so that I could desire such an order in which the rule of this activity of mine would become a universal law. Here the principle of the will is one regularity in general, without any specific law limited to certain actions, and so it should be, unless duty is an empty dream or a chimerical concept.
This ethical principle is not drawn from experience. It is even impossible to indicate in experience at least one case in which one could confidently assert that the rule of action is actually this principle, and not some empirical motives. But this circumstance, obviously, does not in any way diminish the importance of the moral principle in itself, since it should express not what happens, but what should be. Nothing can be worse for morality than to deduce a principle from empirical examples, for every such example must itself be evaluated according to the principles of morality in order to see whether it can serve as a genuine moral example, so that the very moral meaning of the example depends on certain already moral principles, which are thus already presupposed by this example and, therefore, cannot be deduced from it. Even the personality of the God-man, before we recognize it as the expression of a moral ideal, must be compared with the idea of moral perfection. He himself says: “Why do you call me good - no one is good except God alone.” But where do we get the concept of God as the highest good, if not from the idea of moral perfection that reason constitutes a priori and is inextricably linked with the concept of free, or self-legal, will.
From what has been said it is clear that all moral concepts are completely a priori, i.e. have their place and source in reason, and moreover in the most ordinary human reason, no less than in the most speculative, that, therefore, they cannot be abstracted from any empirical, and therefore random knowledge, and that in this purity of their origin lies all their dignity, thanks to which they can serve us as the highest practical principles.
Everything that exists in nature acts according to its laws, but only a rational being has the ability to act according to submission law, i.e. according to the principle, and this ability is actually called by will. Since reason is necessary to derive actions from laws, it follows that the will is nothing more than practical reason.
When reason determines the will immutably, then the actions of such a being, recognized as objectively necessary, are also subjectively necessary; that is, the will in this case is the ability to choose only what the mind recognizes, regardless of inclination, as practically (morally) necessary or good. If reason in itself does not sufficiently determine the will, if it is still subject to subjective conditions (i.e., some motives), which are not always consistent with objective ones, if, in a word, the will in itself does not completely agree with reason (as we we see in reality among people), in this case, actions recognized objectively as necessary are subjectively random, and the determination of such will in accordance with objective laws is compulsion. That is, the relationship of objective laws to a not entirely good will is presented as a determination of the will of a rational being, albeit by the foundations of reason, but which, however, this will by its nature does not necessarily follow.
The presentation of an objective principle, in so far as it is compelling to the will, is called a command (of reason), and the formula of a command is called imperative. All imperatives are expressed to some duty and through this they show the relation of the objective laws of reason to such a will, which, by its subjective property, is not determined with internal necessity by these laws, and such a relation is compulsion. These imperatives say what it would be good to do or what to abstain from, but they say this to a will that does not always do something because it seems to it that it is good to do it. Practically, what is good is that which determines the will through the representation of reason, therefore, not from subjective reasons, but from objective ones, that is, from such reasons that are significant for every rational being as such.
Thus, practically good or practical good is distinguished from have a nice one, which has an influence on the will only through sensation, for purely subjective reasons, valid only for one or another, and not as a rational principle obligatory for all.
A completely good will is also under the objective laws of good, but cannot be represented as being forced by these laws to act according to law, because it itself, by its subjective property, can only be determined by the representation of good. Therefore, for the divine or generally for the holy will, no imperatives matter; obligation is inappropriate here, since the will itself necessarily agrees with the law. Thus, imperatives are only formulas that determine the relationship of the objective law of the will in general to the subjective imperfection in the will of one or another rational being, for example. person.
The concept of imperative generally does not have exclusively moral meaning, but is necessarily presupposed by all practical activity. Imperatives generally command or hypothetically(conditional), or categorically(indicative). The first represents the practical necessity of some possible action as a means to achieving something else that is or may be desirable. The categorical imperative is one that represents some action as objectively necessary in itself, without relation to another goal.
Whatever is possible to the powers of any intelligent being can be represented as a possible end of some will, and therefore there is an infinite number of practical principles, insofar as they are represented as necessary for the attainment of this or that possible end.
All sciences have a practical part, consisting of problems and rules, or imperatives, indicating how the solution of these problems can be achieved. Such imperatives can be called imperatives skills or dexterity. Moreover, the question is not whether the goal is reasonable and good, but only what needs to be done in order to achieve it: the prescription for a doctor on how to best cure a person, and the prescription for a compiler of poisons on how to kill him more accurately, have on this side equal value, since each serves to fully achieve the intended purpose. But there is a goal that is not problematic, which is not just one of many possible goals, but is assumed to actually exist for all beings by virtue of natural necessity - this goal is happiness.
The hypothetical imperative, which represents the practical necessity of action as a means to achieve this, always real goal, has the character assertoric(affirmative). Since the choice of the best means to achieve the greatest wealth or happiness is determined by prudence, or practical mind ( Klugheit ), then this imperative can be called the imperative of prudence; it is still hypothetical, that is, it has only a conditional or relative, although completely real, meaning, because the action it prescribes is not prescribed for its own sake, but only as a means to another goal, namely happiness.
Finally, as has been said, there is a third kind of imperative, which directly prescribes a certain course of action without any relation to any other intended goal. This imperative is categorical and, in its unconditional, internal necessity, has an apodictic character. Since it refers not to the material and external objects of the action and not to the results of the action, but to its own form and to the principle from which the action follows, and the essentially good in the action it prescribes must consist in a certain mood of the will, whatever the result her actions, then this imperative is actually moral. The essential difference between these three imperatives corresponds to the inequality in the degree of their coercive power for the will.
The first kind of imperatives are only technical rules of skill; the second kind is the essence pragmatic instructions prudence; only the third kind of imperatives are real laws, or moral commands.
Technical rules apply only to possible targets, chosen at will, and therefore have no binding force.
The instructions of prudence, although they relate to a real and necessary goal, but since the very content of this goal, namely happiness, does not have a universal and unconditional character, but is determined by subjective and empirical conditions, then the instructions for achieving these subjective goals can only have the character of advice and instructions .
Only a categorical, or moral, imperative, not determined by any external conditions and objects, thus representing the nature of an internal unconditional necessity, can have its own internal binding force for the will, that is, serve as a basis for duties as a moral law.
III
What, exactly, is this unconditional moral law, or categorical imperative?
When I have imagined any hypothetical imperative in general, I do not know in advance what it will contain, I do not know until I am given the conditions that determine it. When I think of the categorical imperative, I thereby know what it contains. For since the imperative, in addition to the law, contains only the need for a subjective rule to be in accordance with this law, the law itself does not contain any condition by which it would be limited, then there is nothing else left except the universality of the law in general, with which the subjective rule of action must be in accordance , which conformity alone represents the imperative as strictly necessary. Thus, there is actually only one categorical imperative, namely: act only according to the rule by which you can work together With thus want it to become a universal law.
Since the universality of the law according to which the action occurs constitutes what is properly called nature in the most general sense (formally), that is, nature is the way of being of things, since it is determined by universal laws, then the universal imperative of duty can be expressed in this way: act as if the rule of your activity through your will should become a universal law of nature.
It is necessary that we can want the rule of our activity to become a universal law: this is the law, or the norm of moral assessment of this action in general.
Some actions are such that their rules could not be thought of as a universal natural law, without internal contradiction. These rules are those by which unjust actions are determined. If the rule of unjust action became a universal law, that is, if, for example, everyone began to deceive each other, then, obviously, no one could be deceived. This rule would destroy itself, since the possibility of deception in a particular case depends only on what is accepted as a general rule Not deceive. With other subjective rules, although this impossibility does not exist, that is, although it is possible to imagine that they would become a universal law, it is impossible for us to do this. wanted since such a will would contradict itself. These rules are those that do not agree with the duties of love, or philanthropy. So, for example, one can imagine an order in which no one would do positive good to others, no one would help others, but it is obvious that we cannot want such an order, because under it we ourselves would lose; since if it were a universal law not to help others, then we could not count on anyone’s help.
The categorical imperative, therefore, excludes both of these types of actions, and two types of duties follow from its application: the duties of justice and the duties of philanthropy.
If the moral principle defined in this way is a necessary law for all rational beings, then it must be associated with the very concept of the will of rational beings in general.
Will is thought of as the ability to determine oneself action in accordance with the representation of known laws, and such an ability can only be found in rational beings.
That which serves for the will as an objective basis for its self-determination is a goal, and if this goal is given through reason alone, then it must have the same meaning for all rational beings. What, on the contrary, contains only the basis for the possibility of action, the result of which is the goal, as achieved, is called a means.
The subjective basis of desire is attraction; the objective basis of the will is motivation. Hence the difference between subjective goals based on drives and objective goals based on motivations that matter to every rational being.
Practical principles formal when they are distracted from all subjective goals; They material, when they base themselves on these goals and, consequently, certain drives.
The goals that a rational being sets for itself arbitrarily, as desired results of activity (material), are all only relative, because only their relation to the well-known will of the subject gives them a price, which thus cannot justify any universal ones for any rational being or even for every will of obligatory principles, that is, practical laws. Therefore, all these relative goals give rise to only hypothetical imperatives.
But if we assume something whose existence in itself has an absolute value, which as an end in itself can be the basis of certain laws, then in it, and only in in it alone, there will be a basis for a possible categorical imperative, i.e. practical law.
But there is no doubt that man and, in general, every rational being exists as an end in itself, and not as a means only for the arbitrary use of one or another will.
In all the actions of a rational being, it itself, as well as any other being towards which its actions are directed, must be taken as the goal. All objects of inclinations have only a conditional price, for if these inclinations themselves and the needs based on them did not exist, then their objects would not have any price. The inclinations themselves, as a source of needs, have so little absolute value that not only cannot they be desired for themselves, but, on the contrary, to be free from them should be the universal desire of all rational beings. Thus, the dignity of all objects that can be achieved by our actions is always conditional. Further, beings whose existence is based not on our will, but on nature, have, however, if they are irrational beings, only a relative value as a means and are therefore called things. Only rational beings are faces, since their very nature defines them as ends in themselves, i.e. as something that cannot be used as a mere means and, therefore, limits any arbitrariness (and is a subject of respect). These are, therefore, not subjective ends, the existence of which, as the product of our action, has a price for us, but objective goals, i.e. something, the existence of which is an end in itself, and, moreover, one in whose place no other end can be put, for which it would serve as a means, because without this there would be nothing at all that has an absolute value. But if everything were only conditional and, therefore, accidental, then no supreme practical principle could be found for reason at all.
If, however, there must exist a supreme practical principle, and in relation to the human will a categorical imperative, then it must, by virtue of the idea that necessity is an end for everyone, constitute an objective principle of the will and, thus, serve as a universal practical law. The basis of this principle is therefore the following: rational nature exists as an end in itself. This is how a person imagines his own existence, and to that extent it is a subjective principle of human actions. But in exactly the same way every other rational being imagines its existence on the same rational basis, which is valid for me; consequently, this is at the same time an objective principle, from which, as from the supreme practical basis, all laws of the will must be derived. Hence the practical imperative receives the following expression: “Act in such a way that humanity, both in your person and in the person of everyone else, is always used by you as an end and never as just a means.”.
That from this second expression of the categorical imperative the duties of both justice and philanthropy naturally follow - it is self-evident.
This principle, which defines humanity and all rational nature in general as an end in itself - which constitutes the highest limiting condition for the freedom of action of every being - this principle is not taken from experience, firstly, in its universality, since it applies to all rational creatures in general, secondly, because in it humanity is not set as a goal for a person subjectively (that is, not as an object that is arbitrarily considered a real goal), but as an objective goal, which, as a law, should constitute the highest the limitation of all subjective ends that we could have, and which, therefore, must flow from pure reason. Namely: the basis of any practical legislation lies objectively in the rule and form of universality, which gives the principle the ability to be a natural law; the subjective basis lies in the goal. But the subject of all ends is every rational being as an end in itself, according to the second formula. From here follows the third practical principle of the will, as the highest condition of its agreement with universal practical reason, namely the idea of the will of every rational being as the universal legislative will.
According to this principle, all subjective rules that cannot be reconciled with the will’s own universal legislation are rejected.
The concept of every rational being, which in all the rules of its will must look at itself as giving a universal law, in order from this point of view to evaluate itself and its actions - this concept leads to another, very fruitful concept - “ kingdoms of goals».
I mean by kingdom the systematic connection of different intelligent beings through common laws. Since laws determine goals according to their universal significance, then, abstracting from the personal differences of rational beings and from the entire content of their particular goals, we obtain the totality of all goals in a systematic combination, that is, the kingdom of goals, consisting of all rational beings as ends in themselves , as well as from those goals that are set by each of them, since these latter are determined by universal law; for rational beings are all under the law, according to which each of them should never treat themselves and all others as mere means, but always at the same time as independent ends.
A rational being belongs to this kingdom of goals as member, when, although it has general legislative significance, it is itself subject to these laws. It belongs to this kingdom as chapter it when, as legislative, it is not subordinate to any other will. This last meaning, that is, the meaning of the head in the kingdom of goals, can thus belong to a rational being when it not only obeys the universal moral law or makes it the law of its will, but also when it has no other motives in its will that would contradict such subordination, making it forced, i.e. when it has no subjective limitations, no inclination and no need. Thus the meaning of a head in the realm of ends cannot belong to a finite being as such, or while it remains finite.
In the kingdom of goals, everything has a price ( Preis ), or dignity ( Würde ). Something that has some value can be replaced by something else of equal or unambiguous value (equivalent); that which is above any price and, therefore, does not admit of any equivalent, has its own dignity.
The three expressions of the supreme principle of morality presented are only different aspects of the same law. Every rule has, firstly, a form consisting of universality, and from this side the formula of the moral imperative is expressed as follows: one must act according to the rule that could be desired, as a universal natural law.
Secondly, the rule has some end, and on this side the formula expresses that a rational being must, as an end in itself, be the limiting condition of all relative and derivative ends.
Thirdly, it is necessary to fully define all goals in their relationship, and this is expressed in the formula that all rules, by virtue of their own legislation, must be consistent in one possible kingdom of ends, which, if realized, would also be the kingdom of nature. Here the transition is made through the category: unity in the form of will (its universality), plurality content of objects (i.e. immediate goals) and universality or integrity in the system of these goals. Acting according to its own internal law, the will is self-legitimate or autonomous. Thus, morality consists in the relation of action to the autonomy of the will. A will whose rules are necessarily or by nature consistent with the laws of autonomy is a holy or unconditionally good will. The dependence of not unconditionally good will on the principle of autonomy (moral compulsion) is duty, which, therefore, cannot refer to an unconditionally good will, or to a holy being.
Will is a special kind of causality of living beings, since they are rational, and freedom is that property of this causality by which it can act independently of foreign causes that determine it, while natural necessity is a property of the causality of all irrational beings by which they are determined to act influence of extraneous causes. This concept of freedom is negative and therefore fruitless for comprehending its essence; but a positive definition of it, more meaningful and fruitful, also follows from it. Since the concept of causality includes the concept of laws, according to which something called cause posits something else called effect, then freedom, although it is not a property of the will determined by the laws of nature, cannot, however, be completely devoid of law, but , on the contrary, must be determined by completely unchanging laws, although of a different kind than physical laws, for otherwise free will would be something unthinkable.
Natural necessity is heteronomy (alienity) of efficient causes, for every action performed by natural necessity is possible only according to the law that something else determines the efficient cause to act. In this case, what else can free will be if not autonomy, that is, the property of the will to be a law for itself? But the proposition “the will is its own law in all its actions” only means the principle - to act only according to a rule that can have itself as an object as a universal law; but this is precisely the formula of the categorical imperative and the principle of morality. Thus, free will and will under moral laws are one and the same; and, therefore, if we assume free will, then morality with its principle follows by itself from one analysis of this concept.
Having reached this pinnacle of Kantian ethics, where it already turns into metaphysics, we can make a general assessment of this moral teaching in connection with other ethical views.
IV
The basic datum of any morality is that between all human actions there is a certain difference, according to which some actions are recognized as proper or normal, and others as improper or abnormal; in short, the basic datum of any morality is the difference between good and evil. What, exactly, is this difference between good and evil and on what is it based - that is the question. Such a formulation of the basic moral question will not be contradicted by the remark that perhaps this distinction between good and evil is only subjective, that it does not correspond to anything in the intrinsic essence of things, that, as the ancients said,oΩ yΪsei kakn ½ Άgaqn, Άll¦ qšsei mnon(not good and evil by nature, but only by position).
This possible assumption still does not eliminate the question of the foundations of moral difference, because in this question it is not stated that the difference between good and evil is objective. Even if it is only subjective, then it still exists and forms the basis of the moral task, without which no rational ethics, no moral teaching makes sense at all. As a result of ethical research, it may turn out that good and evil are only apparent, relative and purely subjective definitions. But in order for this to happen, they must first be subjected to research.
So, what is good (for the positive concept of good and good gives us the opportunity to define the opposite concept of evil as purely negative)? The first elementary definition is given by the ethics of Idonism, which defines good as pleasure or pleasant. And indeed, every good, as achieved or realized, gives pleasure (in the broad sense of the word) or is pleasant for the subject. But it does not follow from this that good itself is identical with pleasure, since this latter is only general sign every satisfied aspiration, both good and evil. All kinds of actions, both those that we call good and those that we call evil, equally and indifferently give pleasure to the subject who wanted to perform these actions and achieved his goal; because pleasure or pleasure is nothing more than the state of the will that has achieved its goal, whatever, however, this will itself may be and whatever its goal. The same can be said about more complex concepts - happiness And benefit, which define the moral teachings of eudaimonism and utilitarianism. These concepts, just like the concept of pleasure or pleasure, do not have any strictly moral character.
Practical activity, as such, has as its object other beings on which or in relation to which the subject acts. Therefore, if, as has been said, the moral dignity of an action cannot be determined by its subjective results for the actor, such as pleasure, happiness, benefit, etc., then isn’t this dignity determined by the attitude of the actor to other subjects, as objects of action? From this side we get a new definition or a new answer to the basic moral question, namely that morally good actions are those that have as their goal the own good of other subjects who constitute the subject of the action, and not the exclusive good of the acting subject. Thus, the difference between good and evil comes down to the difference between altruism and egoism.
This principle is much more consistent than the previous ones, since it indicates a certain specific difference between two types of actions, coinciding with the generally accepted difference between good and evil.
But what base this difference?
Empirical ethics, which can seek its foundations only in the facts of human nature, which can therefore have only psychological foundations, points as the source of morally good action to the natural tendency of human nature to identify with others, to compassion, or sympathy.
There is no doubt that this is where the main psychological source moral connections between people, but this does not give us an answer to the basic question of ethics, which requires not an indication of the factual basis of this or that activity, but a reasonable explanation or justification of the very difference between normal and abnormal, or morally good and evil actions.
Although moral actions stem psychologically from sympathy, it is not sympathy, as a natural inclination, that gives them moral significance, for if a natural inclination in itself could serve as a moral justification, then so can selfish or evil actions, as based on another similar one. the inclinations of human nature would have the same justification and, consequently, the distinction between good and evil would again disappear.
Doing a good deed out of inclination, I nevertheless realize, if only I attach moral significance to my action, that I must would do it and without this inclination and that in the same way every other subject, whether he has or does not have this inclination, must to act one way and not another, and it makes no difference how he actually acts. Thus, by giving moral significance to certain actions, I thereby give them the character of a universal, internally necessary law, to whom every subject owes or must obey if he wants his activity to have a moral value; Thus, this moral price for the subject is determined not by inclination, but debt or duty. From here, of course, it does not follow that a certain action has no moral value simply because it is performed out of inclination. It has no moral value only when it is done exclusively by mere inclination, without any consciousness of duty or obligation, for then it is only an accidental psychological fact, having no general, objective significance. Consciousness of duty or obligation and natural inclination can be combined in one and the same action, and this, according to the general consciousness, not only does not reduce, but, on the contrary, increases the moral value of the action, although Kant, as we have seen, holds the opposite opinion and demands for the action to be performed exclusively according to duty, and the tendency to good actions can only reduce their moral value.
Since duty or obligation determines the general form moral principle, as universal and necessary, while the sympathetic inclination is the psychological motive of moral activity, then these two factors cannot contradict each other, since they relate to different aspects of the matter - material and formal; and since in morality, as in everything else, form and matter are equally necessary, then, consequently, the rational principle of morality, as an unconditional duty or obligation, that is, a universal and necessary law for a rational being, is completely compatible with the experimental principle of morality, as the natural tendency towards sympathy in a living being. The moral principle, expressed in the first formula of Kant's categorical imperative, determines only the form of moral activity, as universal and necessary. This formula follows analytically from the very original concept of moral action, as normal or as such, which, in contrast to immoral action, is what must be. In fact, the difference between good and evil, as normal and abnormal, obviously presupposes that the first, that is, normal, is universal and necessary, while the second is only particular and accidental. Hence the expression of the moral principle: act in such a way that the rule of your activity can become a universal and necessary law in your will.
But the concept of universality already presupposes many actors: if the rule of my activity should be universal, then, obviously, there must be other actors for whom this rule should have the indicated meaning. If this subject were the only moral figure, then the rule of his activity would have a single meaning and could not be universal. And my very activity, as such, already necessarily presupposes other beings as its objects, and, therefore, the moral form of this activity cannot be indifferent in relation to these objects; and if the general form of moral activity, as such or in itself, consists in universality, then in relation to the objects of action this form is defined as follows: I must have as my own object of activity, as moral, only such things that themselves have a universal and necessary character, which can be ends in themselves, and not means only. Hence the second formula of the categorical imperative: act in such a way that all rational beings, as such, are an end in themselves, and not just a means of your activity.
According to Kant, only reasonable creatures can be such a target; but this limitation stems only from Kant’s one-sided rationalism and is devoid of any objective grounds.
And, firstly, what is a rational being? In this case, that is, regarding a moral question, it is obviously not theoretical or speculative reason that can matter, but only practical reason or moral will; and in fact, Kant in his ethics always understands a rational being as a being possessing practical reason or moral will. But should we mean here actual possession, in act, in implementation, or only potential, in possibility or capabilities ? In the first case, rational beings, which constitute the only object of obligatory moral activity, would be understood only as those in whom the moral law is actually implemented, that is, the righteous, and, therefore, we could have a moral obligation only towards the righteous. But such an assumption, firstly, leads to absurd consequences, too obvious to dwell on; secondly, it represents a hidden logical circle, since here the moral law is determined by its object (rational beings as independent goals), but this object, in turn, is determined only by its actual compliance with the moral law; finally, thirdly, this assumption directly contradicts the formal principle of morality as absolutely necessary. In fact, if, according to the above assumption, we had the obligation to act morally only in relation to persons who implement the moral law in themselves, that is, to the righteous (and in relation to others we would have the right according to the proverb: “With wolves, howl like a wolf "), then if there were not a single righteous person in the sphere of our activity (which is not only possible, but also quite plausible), then any moral duty or obligation would thereby be abolished for us. Thus, the binding nature of the moral law for given subjects would depend on the random empirical fact of the existence of other subjects who implement this law and through this can be the subject of our moral activity. Meanwhile, according to the general form of the moral principle, it must be an unconditional duty for every subject, completely independent of any empirical data, by the way, regardless of whether this duty is fulfilled by anyone, including ourselves; for the fact of non-fulfillment of the moral law concerns only empirical subjects, and not this law itself, as such. Not to mention the fact that, as Kant noted, there is no way at all to determine whether given actions are actually performed due to one moral principle or according to other, extraneous motives, that is, whether they actually have moral dignity or not ; and from here it follows that we can never decide whether a given active subject has the character of righteousness or not, that is, we cannot distinguish the righteous from the unrighteous in empirical reality, and therefore, we cannot even assert with certainty that in this activity there are any some righteous people.
So, actual possession of practical reason or moral will is unthinkable as a condition determining the exclusive object of moral activity, and in fact Kant limits himself to the requirement of potential possession alone. In this sense, rational beings, who constitute the only true object of moral activity as independent goals, are defined as having the ability practical reason or moral will, that is, how capable of being or becoming moral(for since the possibility or ability, by its very concept, is not exhausted by a given reality, the opportunity to be is always the opportunity to become), which, as we know, comes down to the ability of autonomy or freedom. But the question is: on what basis can we divide beings regarding this ability, that is, recognize that some of them possess it and some do not, that some are rationally free beings and others are not? There are two possible points of view here. The first of them, empirical, considering all beings as phenomena in the necessary connection of their actual, existing existence, subjects them all, without exception, to the same law of natural necessity and, therefore, not only does not provide any grounds for the specified division, but directly excludes it. On this side there is not a single being that is free in anything, and therefore obligated to something. Everything that is done is necessary, everything done is an equally immutable fact that could not help but happen, therefore, under the given conditions, what it is must be, but unconditional obligation has no meaning. Here, therefore, there is no place at all for the formal principle of morality, as unconditional and non-empirical. Another point of view, on which only formal ethics can rely, recognizes that all beings, being undoubtedly phenomena or facts from the empirical side, are at the same time Not only phenomena or facts, but something more, precisely have their own internal essence, the essence of things is in to myself ( Dinge an sich ), or numenas; in this intelligible essence they cannot be subject to external, empirical necessity and, therefore, have freedom. This latter, therefore, belongs to all beings without exception, for nothing that really exists can be devoid of an intelligible essence, since otherwise it would be a phenomenon without an appearance, that is, nonsense. If, therefore, from the first point of view, all beings are equally subject to natural necessity, and from the second, they are all equally free, then, consequently, from the empirical, and from the intelligible, and from the physical, and from the metaphysical side, there appears to be a fundamental homogeneity of all beings in the indicated relation, and there is no division between them, and, therefore, there can be no grounds, either empirical or speculative, to contrast unconditionally rational beings with unreasonable ones and limit the moral field to the former alone.
So, freeing the second expression of the formal moral principle from uncertainty and internal contradiction, we obtain the following rule: moral will, as such, must have as its true object all beings, not only as means, but also as ends, or in the form of an imperative: act like this in such a way that all beings constitute an end, and not a means only to yours activities. In this form, the second formula of the categorical imperative obviously coincides with the highest principle of empirical ethics, namely: “harm no one and help everyone as much as you can.” The expression of the categorical imperative gives only formal logical certainty to this principle. It is obvious, in fact, that, treating other beings as mere means, I can also harm them if this is necessary for the purpose for which I use them as means; recognizing other beings as goals, I must in no case harm them and am always obliged to act in their favor. Consequently, the rule of harming no one and helping everyone is only a more external and empirical expression for the rule of looking at all beings as ends and not means.
In addition to the general form and the immediate objects of action, moral activity must have a certain general result, which constitutes its ideal content or the last, final goal. If a moral agent is each subject, and all others are for him objects of action, as ends in themselves, then the general result of the moral activity of all subjects will be their organic union into the kingdom of ends. The kingdom of ends is an ideal system where each member is not only a material or a means, but is itself an end and in this capacity determines the activities of all others, thus having universal legislative significance. From this it is clear that each individual being constitutes the actual object or goal of moral activity, not in its particularity or separateness (for in this case moral activity would not necessarily have the form of universality that belongs to it), but as a necessary member of the universal kingdom of goals. This concept of the kingdom of ends defines the third and final expression of the categorical imperative.
It is clear that all three expressions relate only to the form of moral activity, and not to its content. The first expression defines this form in itself, in its abstractness; the second defines this form in relation to the objects of moral action, and the third – in relation to the general and final goal.
The last two expressions are necessary applications of the first. From some of Kant's remarks one might conclude that he attaches exclusive importance to the first expression of the categorical imperative. The moral dignity of an action, he says, relates exclusively to the form of the action, and not to its objects or purpose. But the very fact that Kant did not limit himself to the first expression of the categorical imperative, relating exclusively to the form in itself or taken abstractly, but added two others, this circumstance shows that these remarks should be considered Kant’s personal interests, stemming primarily from the formal character of his mind and which he tried to eliminate, yielding to the objective necessity of the matter itself.
[V.S. Soloviev]|["JUSTIFICATION OF GOOD"]|[Library "Milestones" ]
© 2000, Library "VEKHI"
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