The Philosophical Review/Volume 1/Review: Scotus Novanticus - Ethica, or the Ethics of Reason

by James Edwin Creighton

Ethica, or the Ethics of Reason. By Scotus Novanticus. Second edition, revised and extended. London and Edinburgh, Williams and Norgate, 1891. — pp. vii, 356.

This work, published anonymously in 1885, like its predecessor, the Metaphysica Nova et Vetusta, at once attracted, in an unusual degree, the attention of the philosophical world, and won for its author, who has since acknowledged his identity as Professor Laurie of Edinburgh, a leading place among living philosophical thinkers. The Ethica now follows the Metaphysica into a second edition, and advantage has been taken of the opportunity thus afforded to "elaborate the argument more fully, and correlate it more frequently" with the earlier work. The book, as now reissued, contains several new chapters, dealing especially with the altruistic virtues and with the idea and functions of the State. The general argument has gained perceptibly in value and impressiveness through the present revision; and while the book has been enlarged, the statement is even more succinct than in the original edition. So condensed is the argument, and so severely scientific is the entire treatment, that the work is, now as formerly, suited rather to the capacity of experts than of the "general reader," or even of the college student. Yet the style is, for the purpose, often strikingly effective; one feels that such earnest and rigorous thinking is appropriately clothed in such language. And to those who can read between the lines of the scientific exposition, the work breathes an ethical fervor which is none the less impressive because it is carefully restrained. The practical interest which, according to Aristotle, an ethical treatise ought to possess, is not absent; the book abounds in acute moral judgments, and gives evidence of an ethical temper which is at once genial and severe.

The author's main thesis is the parallelism of knowledge and morality. He finds "will-reason" at the heart of both. "The end of man, as of every other organism, is self-realization " (p. 37). This is possible only through the fulfilment of the idea or law of man's nature. The peculiarity, in man's case, is that we have "realization of self by self"; man has to "organize himself," or reduce himself to law. For in man there is a dual nature — the "attuent" and the "rational," — the man of feeling or impulse, and the man of reason or will. The former is the "real" or "nature," the "subject" or "individual"; the latter is the "formal," the "personality," or "ego," constituted by the subsuming of the attuent subject or individual. The function of the rational ego, in relation to "sensibility," is essentially the same as its function in relation to "sense"; in both cases the "attuent" has to be "intuited." "All incitements of feeling are arrested just as, in the cognition of the external, the presentations of sense are arrested; and they are co-ordinated towards ends" (p. 51). "Self-realization, then, is possible only through the constant presence of the formal (the idea) in the real, of will in feeling, and its perpetual supremacy in that domain" (p. 37). Accordingly, "perhaps the best expression for the chief good ... is Fulness of Life achieved through Law by the Action of Will as Reason on Sensibility" (p. 287). On the other hand, "immorality is the letting loose of feeling in opposition to the idea and the law in it; it is individuality in opposition to personality" (p. 244). In immorality, "will is defeated, the personality overcome, and the attuent subject it is which volitionizes, just as a dog volitionizes. The subject takes possession of the personality, and uses it for its natural desires" (pp. 320, 321).

Professor Laurie's scheme of the virtues is based upon the several kinds of feeling or attuency which have to be moralized. Two main divisions are recognized, the egoistic and the altruistic. The former is called "appetition," and the corresponding virtue (or group of virtues) is temperance or self-control. Each desire naturally seeks its own satisfaction; it must be brought under the law of the life of an organism of desires. Altruistic impulse, or sympathy, which the author finds to be as "natural" as the egoistic, stands equally in need of moralization, organization, or subjection to the law of reason. When thus treated, it yields the virtues of justice, negative and positive, and benevolence. Negative justice is defined as "the freedom of each person to realize himself in so far as this is compatible with the freedom of every other member of the same society" (p. 161). "In so far as our fellow-men are unable to realize themselves, owing to obstacles for which not they, but we, are, directly or indirectly, responsible, our activity in their interest is ... positive, as distinguished from negative, justice" (p. 183). "But when our good- will extends to the. helping of others to help themselves, by sharing or removing burdens self-caused, or not due directly or indirectly to us or others with whom we are associated (and whose responsibilities, therefore, we share), the motive is one of benevolence" (p. 184). These virtues tend to pass into one another, as the emotion of humanity finds in them an ever fuller expression; "the force of the human emotion is, in many, perhaps most natures, so strong, that the boundary line between strict negative justice and benevolence is always being obliterated" (p. 182).

The discussion of the State is one of the most valuable parts of the book. The author insists upon an ethical conception of the State, as the great mechanism for the realization of personality. He combats the extreme view of it as the "social organism." "It is a mistake to regard the State or the social organism as the supreme end — as that for which the individual exists, the State realizing itself through him. . . . The State, at best, is the work of men's feeble hands, working with unsteady purpose; the person, with all his claims, is the work of God" (p. 69). But if "a State collectivism ... in which the unqualified conception of an 'organism' logically lands us, is profoundly immoral" (p. 220), the theory of individualism is no less at fault. "The question, in truth, has not been for ages a question of individualism, but a question of personality" (p. 219). The acceptance of an ethical conception of the State means the abandonment of the laissez-faire principle, and the inclusion within the political sphere of positive, as well as negative, justice. Even the "ideal life" falls within the scope of the State's action; "the promotion of religion, art, and science" is its highest function. The State is the great "ethical teacher of its citizens." The coercion which is characteristic of State action at lower levels must of course cease in these "ideal relations." The political limit is, in general, the same as the ethical. "With the ethical State, as with the ethical person in his relation to other persons, the limitation arises out of the duty imposed on every man to realize self by self, and therefore freely" (p. 252). Instead of acting vicariously for its citizens, the State should help the individual to help himself.

Such is, in brief outline, the ethical theory developed by Professor Laurie in this work. A single criticism may be suggested in closing. It will be seen that the author reaches an ethical position closely corresponding to the "dualism" of his metaphysic. The formal and the real, the rational and the attuent, remain apart in both spheres. In an ethical reference, reason without feeling is empty, yielding merely the form of law without its content. There is need, accordingly, of a "datum" or "raw material" of sensibility, as well as of sense. In both cases an "empirical instruction" is requisite. Yet feeling is described as "chaotic" (p. 156), "anarchical" (p. 147), a mere "raw material." The author entitles his theory " The Ethics of Reason," and fundamentally it seems open to the same criticism as the ethical rationalism of Kant. The insistence upon the ethical supremacy of reason is in both cases admirable, but the same injustice is done to feeling in both. Does not the epistemological parallel suggest that this ethical defect is due to a psychological error? Does not feeling, like sensation, already contain in it the germs of order and relation, to be developed by reason into law?

James Seth.