Page:History of Modern Philosophy (Falckenberg).djvu/555

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THE PRACTICAL IDEAS. 533 The most important among them, that which treats of moral beauty, moral philosophy, has therefore to inquire concerning the simplest relations of will, which call forth moral approval or disapproval (independently of the inter- est of the spectator), to inquire concerning the practical Ideas or pattern-concepts, in accordance with which moral taste, involuntarily and with unconditional evidence, judges concerning the worth or unworth of (actually happening or merely represented) volitions. Herbart enumerates five such primary Ideas or fundamental judgments of con- science. (i) The Idea of inner freedom compares the will with the judgment, the conviction, the conscience of the agent himself. The agreement of his desire with his own judg- ment, with the precept of his taste, pleases, lack of agree- ment displeases. Since the power to determine the will according to one's own insight of itself establishes only an empty consistency and loyalty to conviction, and may also subserve immoral craft, the first Idea waits for its content from the four following. (2) The Idea of perfection has reference to the quanti- tative relations of the manifold strivings of a subject, in intensity, extension, and concentration. The strong is pleas- ing in contrast with the weak, the greater (more extended, richer) in contrast with the smaller, the collected in con- trast with the scattered ; in other words, in the individual desires it is energy which pleases, in their sum variety, in the system co-operation. While the first two Ideas have compared the will of the individual man with itself, the remaining ones consider its relation to the will of other rational beings, the third to a merely represented will, and the last two to an actual one. (3) According to the Idea of benevolence or goodness, which gives the most immediate and definite criterion of the worth of the disposition, the will pleases if it is in har- mony with the (represented) will of another, i. e., makes the satisfaction of the latter its aim. (4) The Idea of right is based on the fact that strife dis- pleases. If several wills come together at one point with- out ill-will (in claiming a thing), the parties ought to