Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- Chronology
- Further reading
- Note on the text
- Translator's note
- Lectures on Philosophical Ethics
- Ethics 1812/13: Introduction and doctrine of goods
- Ethics 1812/13: Doctrine of virtue and doctrine of duties
- Introduction, final version (probably 1816/17)
- Doctrine of goods, final version (probably 1816/17)
- Doctrine of duties, final version (probably 1814/17)
- Index
Doctrine of goods, final version (probably 1816/17)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- Chronology
- Further reading
- Note on the text
- Translator's note
- Lectures on Philosophical Ethics
- Ethics 1812/13: Introduction and doctrine of goods
- Ethics 1812/13: Doctrine of virtue and doctrine of duties
- Introduction, final version (probably 1816/17)
- Doctrine of goods, final version (probably 1816/17)
- Doctrine of duties, final version (probably 1814/17)
- Index
Summary
Introduction
1 Since the interrelation of reason and nature which we have taken as our premise in the domain of the doctrine of morals is the reasonableness of human nature, taken independently of all action, and yet this interrelation, which must be conceived in moral terms, encompasses all those aspects of nature which come into lively contact with human nature, then the totality of everything that can be posited as having an independent moral existence is the totality of our conception of the effects of human reason in the whole of earthly nature.
Human nature posited as nature [itself], inasmuch as it is a species, is conditional upon and sets conditions for the whole of earthly nature. It rests upon all other [aspects of nature] as the highest development of the spiritual in the material, but all the rest, even as life and organism, can only be understood as a striving towards it. To this extent the doctrine of morals presupposes the whole of earthly nature. But for this very reason nature in this sense can only achieve perfection where human nature achieves perfection. The activity of reason is thus all directed towards it too, and the totality [of that activity] is the absorption of the whole of nature into that interrelation with reason which was originally presupposed in human nature and which is realized in action in and through human nature.
2 Inasmuch as all being, as expressed in the doctrine of morals, is the expression of the action of reason and nature together upon nature, the interrelation of nature and reason is to be thought of as nature organized for reason, and the activity of reason as an organizing principle.
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- Chapter
- Information
- Schleiermacher: Lectures on Philosophical Ethics , pp. 168 - 220Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2002