The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity
GA 4
12. Moral Imagination
(Darwinism and Morality)
[ 1 ] The free spirit acts on the basis of its impulses, which are intuitions selected by thought from the totality of its world of ideas. For the unfree spirit, the reason why it singles out a particular intuition from its world of ideas to serve as the basis for an action lies in the world of perception given to it, that is, in its past experiences. Before reaching a decision, it recalls what someone in a case analogous to its own has done or deemed proper to do, or what God has commanded for such a case, and so on, and acts accordingly. For the free spirit, these preconditions are not the sole motives for action. It makes a decision that is, quite simply, the first. He cares neither about what others have done in this case nor what they have commanded regarding it. He has purely ideal reasons that move him to single out a specific concept from the sum of his concepts and to translate it into action. His action, however, will belong to perceptible reality. What he accomplishes will thus be identical with a very specific content of perception. The concept will have to be realized in a concrete individual event. As a concept, it will not be able to encompass this individual case. It will be able to relate to it only in the way that a concept relates to a perception in general, for example, as the concept of a lion relates to an individual lion. The intermediate link between concept and perception is the mental image (cf. 5. 107 f.). To the unfree mind, this intermediate link is given from the outset. The motives are present in his consciousness from the outset as mental images. When he wishes to carry out an action, he does so as he has seen it, or as he is commanded to do in the individual case. Authority therefore works best through examples, that is, through the transmission of very specific individual actions to the consciousness of the unfree mind. The Christian acts less according to the teachings than according to the example of the Redeemer. Rules have less value for positive action than for refraining from certain actions. Laws only take on a general conceptual form when they prohibit actions, but not when they command them to be done. Laws regarding what he is to do must be given to the unfree mind in a very concrete form: Clean the street in front of your house! Pay your taxes in this specific amount at Tax Office X! and so on. Laws designed to prevent actions take on a conceptual form: “Thou shalt not steal!” “Thou shalt not commit adultery!” Yet these laws affect the unfree mind only through reference to a concrete mental image—for example, that of the corresponding temporal punishments, or the pangs of conscience, or eternal damnation, and so on.
[ 2 ] As soon as the impulse to act is present in its general conceptual form (for example: you should do good to your fellow human beings! you should live in such a way as to best promote your well-being!), then in each individual case the concrete mental image of the action (the relation of the concept to the content of perception) must first be found. For the free spirit, who is driven by neither example nor fear of punishment, etc., this translation of the concept into mental image is always necessary.
[ 3 ] Human beings initially produce concrete mental images from the sum of their thoughts through the imagination. What the free spirit needs in order to realize its ideas and assert itself is therefore moral imagination. It is the source of the free spirit’s actions. That is why only people with moral imagination are truly morally productive. Mere moral preachers—that is, people who spin out moral rules without being able to condense them into concrete mental images—are morally unproductive. They resemble critics who know how to intelligently analyze what a work of art should be like, yet cannot themselves produce even the slightest thing.
[ 4 ] In order to realize its mental image, the moral imagination must intervene in a specific realm of perceptions. Human action does not create perceptions, but rather reshapes those that already exist, giving them a new form. In order to be able to transform a specific object of perception—or a sum of such objects—in accordance with a moral mental image, one must have grasped the lawful content (the previous mode of operation, which one wishes to reshape or give a new direction) of this perceptual image. One must furthermore find the mode by which this regularity can be transformed into a new one. This aspect of moral agency rests on knowledge of the phenomenal world with which one is dealing. It is thus to be sought in a branch of scientific knowledge in general. Moral action thus presupposes, in addition to the moral faculty of ideas 1Only superficiality could see in the use of the word “faculty” in this and other places in this text a relapse into the doctrine of the old psychology of the faculties of the soul. The connection with what was said in 5. 95 f. precisely yields the meaning of the word and the moral imagination the ability to transform the world of perceptions without breaking its natural-law connection. This ability is moral technique. It is learnable in the same sense that science in general is learnable. In general, people are better suited to finding concepts for the world as it already exists than to productively determining future actions that do not yet exist from the imagination. Therefore, it is quite possible that people without moral imagination receive moral mental images from others and skillfully imprint them on reality. The reverse can also occur: people with moral imagination may lack the technical skill and must then rely on others to realize their mental images.
[ 5 ] Insofar as moral action requires knowledge of the objects within the scope of our actions, our actions are based on this knowledge. What is at issue here are laws of nature. We are dealing with natural science, not ethics.
[ 6 ] Moral imagination and the capacity for moral ideas can only become objects of knowledge after they have been produced by the individual. But then they no longer govern life; rather, they have already governed it. They are to be understood as active causes like all others (they are merely ends for the subject). We deal with them as a natural science of moral mental images.
[ 7 ] Ethics cannot exist as a normative science.
[ 8 ] There have been attempts to uphold the normative character of moral laws, at least to the extent that ethics was understood in the sense of dietetics, which derives general rules from the living conditions of the organism in order to use them to influence the body specifically (Paulsen, System of Ethics). This comparison is false because our moral life cannot be compared to the life of the organism. The organism’s functioning exists independently of our intervention; we find its laws already present in the world, so we can seek them out and then apply those we have found. Moral laws, however, are first created by us. We cannot apply them before they are created. The error arises from the fact that moral laws are not created anew in content at every moment, but are inherited. Those inherited from our ancestors then appear to be given, like the natural laws of the organism. However, they are by no means applied by a later generation with the same authority as dietary rules. For they apply to the individual and not, as natural law does, to a specimen of a species. As an organism, I am such a specimen of the species, and I will live naturally if I apply the natural laws of the species to my particular case; as a moral being, I am an individual and have my very own laws. 2When Paulsen (p. 15 of the cited book) says: “Different natural dispositions and living conditions require not only a different physical diet but also a different intellectual and moral diet,” he comes very close to the correct insight, but still misses the decisive point. Insofar as I am an individual, I do not need a diet. Dietetics is the art of bringing the particular specimen into harmony with the general laws of the species. As an individual, however, I am not a specimen of the species.
[ 9 ] The view expressed here appears to contradict that fundamental doctrine of modern natural science known as the theory of evolution. But it only appears to do so. By evolution is understood the actual emergence of the later from the earlier in accordance with the laws of nature. By evolution in the organic world is understood the fact that the later (more perfect) organic forms are actual descendants of the earlier (imperfect) ones and have emerged from them in accordance with the laws of nature. Adherents of the organic theory of evolution would actually have to create a mental image of a time on Earth when a being could have witnessed the gradual emergence of reptiles from the proto-amniotes with its own eyes, had it been present as an observer at that time and endowed with a correspondingly long lifespan. Likewise, proponents of evolutionary theory would have to create a mental image of a being that could have observed the emergence of the solar system from the Kant-Laplacean primordial nebula, had it been able to remain in a suitable location within the realm of the world-ether for an infinitely long time. The fact that, in such a mental image, both the nature of the primordial amniotes and that of the Kant-Laplacean cosmic nebula would have to be conceived differently than materialist thinkers do is not at issue here. However, it should not occur to any evolutionary theorist to claim that he can derive the concept of a reptile with all its characteristics from his concept of the primordial animal, even if he has never seen a reptile. Nor should the solar system be derived from the concept of the Kant-Laplacean primordial nebula if this concept of the primordial nebula is conceived directly and solely in terms of the perception of the primordial nebula. In other words: the evolutionary theorist must, if he thinks consistently, assert that later phases of development actually arise from earlier ones, that if we have given the concept of the imperfect and the concept of the perfect, we can see the connection; but by no means should he admit that the concept derived from the earlier stage is sufficient to develop the later one from it. It follows for the ethicist that, while he can indeed see the connection between later moral concepts and earlier ones, it does not follow that even a single new moral idea can be derived from the earlier ones. As a moral being, the individual produces his own content. This produced content is just as much a given for the ethicist as reptiles are a given for the naturalist. Reptiles evolved from the proto-amniotes; but the naturalist cannot derive the concept of reptiles from that of proto-amniotes. Later moral ideas develop from earlier ones; but the ethicist cannot derive the moral concepts of a later period from those of an earlier cultural period. The confusion arises from the fact that, as natural scientists, we already have the facts before us and only observe them with hindsight; whereas in moral action, we ourselves first create the facts that we recognize afterward. In the process of developing the moral world order, we do what nature does at a lower level: we alter something perceptible. The ethical norm cannot therefore initially be recognized like a law of nature, but must be created. Only when it exists can it become an object of cognition.
[ 10 ] But can we not measure the new against the old? Will not every person be compelled to measure what is produced by their moral imagination against traditional moral teachings? For that which is to reveal itself as morally productive, this is just as absurd as it would be to measure a new form of nature against the old and say: because reptiles do not correspond to the primordial amphibians, they are an illegitimate (pathological) form.
[ 11 ] Ethical individualism, therefore, is not at odds with a properly understood theory of evolution, but follows directly from it. Haeckel’s family tree, stretching from the primitive animals all the way up to humans as organic beings, should be traceable without any interruption of natural law or any break in the uniform course of evolution, all the way up to the individual as a moral being in a certain sense. Nowhere, however, could the nature of a subsequent species be derived from the nature of an ancestral species. But just as it is true that the moral ideas of the individual have perceptibly emerged from those of his ancestors, so it is also true that he is morally barren if he does not himself possess moral ideas.
[ 12 ] The same ethical individualism that I have developed on the basis of the preceding views could also be derived from the theory of evolution. The ultimate conclusion would be the same; only the path by which it is reached would be different.
[ 13 ] The emergence of entirely new moral ideas from the moral imagination is just as little a mystery to evolutionary theory as the emergence of a new species of animal from another. However, as a monistic worldview, this theory must reject any otherworldly (metaphysical) influence in moral life—just as in the natural world—that is merely deduced and cannot be experienced ideally. In doing so, it follows the same principle that drives it when it seeks the causes of new organic forms and does not invoke the intervention of an otherworldly being that brings about each new species through supernatural influence according to a new creative idea. Just as monism cannot require a supernatural creative idea to explain living beings, so too is it impossible for it to derive the moral order of the world from causes that do not lie within the experiential world. It cannot find the essence of a will as a moral one exhausted by attributing it to a continuous supernatural influence on moral life (divine world government from outside), or to a specific temporal revelation (the giving of the Ten Commandments), or to the appearance of God on earth (Christ). What all of this brings about in and upon the human being only becomes moral when it becomes an individual’s own experience within human experience. For monism, moral processes are products of the world like everything else that exists, and their causes must in the world—that is, because the human being is the bearer of morality—be sought within the human being.
[ 14 ] Ethical individualism is thus the crowning achievement of the edifice that Darwin and Haeckel sought to build for the natural sciences. It is the application of a spiritualized theory of evolution to moral life.
[ 15 ] Anyone who, from the outset, narrow-mindedly assigns an arbitrarily limited domain to the concept of the natural may then easily find themselves unable to find any room within it for free individual action. The evolutionary theorist who proceeds consistently cannot fall into such narrow-mindedness. He cannot conclude that the natural mode of development ends with the ape and attribute a “supernatural” origin to humans; even as he seeks the natural ancestors of humans, he must already seek the spirit within nature; nor can he stop at the organic functions of humans and regard only these as natural, but must also view the morally free life as a spiritual continuation of the organic.
[ 16 ] In accordance with his basic view, the developmental theorist can only assert that present-day moral action arises from other types of world events; the characterization of action—that is, its definition as free—he must leave to the direct observation of action. After all, he merely asserts that humans evolved from ancestors that were not yet human. What humans are like must be determined through observation of them. The results of this observation cannot contradict a correctly understood history of development. Only the claim that the results are such as to exclude a natural world order could not be brought into agreement with the newer direction of natural science. 3We are right to designate thoughts (ethical ideas) as objects of observation. For even if the products of thought do not enter the field of observation during the act of thinking, they can nevertheless become the object of observation afterward. And in this way we have arrived at our characterization of action.
[ 17 ] Ethical individualism has nothing to fear from a self-understanding natural science: observation reveals freedom to be the defining characteristic of the perfect form of human action. This freedom must be attributed to human will insofar as it actualizes purely ideal intuitions. For these are not the results of a necessity acting upon them from without, but stand on their own. If a person finds that an action is the reflection of such an ideal intuition, he perceives it as free. In this characteristic of an action lies freedom.
[ 18 ] From this perspective, what of the distinction mentioned above (5. 22 and 16) between the two propositions: “To be free means to be able to do what one wills”—and the other: “To be able to desire at will and not to be able to desire” is the true meaning of the doctrine of free will? Hamerling bases his view of free will precisely on this distinction, declaring the first to be correct and the second to be an absurd tautology. He says: I can do what I want. But to say: I can want what I want, is an empty tautology. — Whether I can do—that is, actually carry out—what I want, what I have thus set before myself as the idea of my action, depends on external circumstances and on my technical skill (cf. p. 193 ff.). To be free means being able to determine the mental images (motives) underlying action through one’s own moral imagination. Freedom is impossible if something outside of me (a mechanical process or merely an inferred extra-worldly God) determines my moral mental images. I am therefore free only when I produce these mental images myself, not when I can carry out the motives that another being has placed within me. A free being is one that can will what it itself considers right. Whoever does something other than what he wills must be driven to that other thing by motives that do not lie within him. Such a person acts unfreely. To be able to will at will what one considers right or wrong thus means: to be able to be free or unfree at will. This is, of course, just as absurd as seeing freedom in the ability to do what one must will. Yet Hamerling asserts the latter when he says: It is perfectly true that the will is always determined by motives, but it is absurd to say that it is therefore unfree; for one cannot wish for or conceive of a greater freedom for it than that of realizing itself in accordance with its own strength and resolve. — Indeed: a greater freedom can be desired, and that is the true one. Namely, this: to determine the reasons for one’s own volition oneself.
[ 19 ] Under certain circumstances, a person can be persuaded to refrain from doing what he wants. To allow others to dictate what he should do—that is, to want what another person, and not he himself, considers right—he is only willing to do so to the extent that he does not feel free.
[ 20 ] External forces may prevent me from doing what I want. In that case, they simply condemn me to inaction or to a state of bondage. Only when they seek to enslave my spirit, drive my motives from my mind, and replace them with their own do they intend to enslave me. The Church therefore opposes not merely action, but specifically impure thoughts, that is: the motives behind my actions. It makes me unfree when it presents all motives it does not specify as impure. A church or any other community creates bondage when its priests or teachers set themselves up as masters of conscience—that is, when the faithful are forced to obtain the motives for their actions from them (from the confessional).
Addendum to the 1918 New Edition
[ 21 ] These remarks on human volition describe what a person can experience in their actions in order to arrive, through this experience, at the realization: my volition is free. Of particular importance is that the justification for describing a will as free is attained through experience: an ideal intuition is realized in the will. This can only be the result of observation, but it is so in the sense that human will observes itself within a current of development whose goal lies in attaining such a possibility of will, sustained by purely ideal intuition. It can be attained because nothing but its own self-constituted essence operates within the ideal intuition. If such an intuition is present in human consciousness, then it has not developed out of the processes of the organism (see pp. 145 ff.), but rather organic activity has withdrawn to make way for the ideal. If I observe a volition that is the image of intuition, then the organically necessary activity has also withdrawn from this volition. The will is free. One cannot observe this freedom of the will unless one is able to see how free will consists in the fact that it is only through the intuitive element that the necessary activity of the human organism is subdued, pushed back, and replaced by the spiritual activity of the will filled with ideas. Only those who cannot make this observation of the twofold nature of free will believe in the lack of freedom of all will. Those who can make this observation come to the realization that, insofar as a human being cannot carry the process of restraining organic activity to its conclusion, they are unfree; but that this lack of freedom strives toward freedom, and that this freedom is by no means an abstract ideal, but rather a guiding force inherent in the human being. Human beings are free to the extent that they can realize in their volition the same state of mind that lives within them when they are conscious of the shaping of purely ideal (spiritual) intuitions.