Category: Philosophy & Ethics
Although the following pages have taken shape in connection with class-room work, they are intended as an independent contribution to ethical science. It is commonly demanded of such a work that its readers shall have some prefatory hint of its sources and deviations. In accor...
Although the following pages have taken shape in connection with class-room work, they are intended as an independent contribution to ethical science. It is commonly demanded of...
5. CHAPTER I.--THE GOOD.We may recognize three main types of theories regarding the good, of which the first two represent (we shall attempt to show) each respectively one side of the truth, while the...
6. CHAPTER II.--THE IDEA OF OBLIGATION.The idea of obligation or duty has two sides. There is the idea of law, of something which controls conduct, and there is the _consciousness_ of the necessity of conforming to t...
7. CHAPTER III.--THE IDEA OF FREEDOM.We may now deal, more briefly, with the problem of moral capacity. It is, in principle, the ability to conceive of an end and to be governed in action by this conceived end. We...
8. PART II.The habit of conceiving moral action as a certain _kind_ of action, instead of all action so far as it really is action, leads us to conceive of morality as a highly desirable s...
9. PART III.We have now analyzed the fundamental moral notions--the good, duty and freedom; we have considered their objective realization, and seen that they are outwardly expressed in soc...
10. CHAPTER I.--THE FORMATION AND GROWTH OF IDEALS.The practical consciousness, or the recognition of ends and relations of action, is what is usually termed _conscience_. The analysis of conscience shows that it involves three...
11. CHAPTER II.--THE MORAL STRUGGLE OR THE REALIZING OF IDEALS.We have already seen that the bare repetition of identically the same acts does not consist with morality. To aim at securing a satisfaction precisely like the one already exper...
12. CHAPTER III.--REALIZED MORALITY OR THE VIRTUES.We have treated of the forming of moral ideals, and of the attempt to realize them against the counter attractions of sensible desire. We have now to treat these ideas as actual...