Part 5

CRITIQUE OF THE CONFUSIONS BETWEEN ECONOMIC SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY OF ECONOMY 382

Adoption of the economic method and formulæ on the part of Philosophy--Errors that derive from it--1st, Negation of philosophy for economy--2nd, Universal value attributed to empirical concepts. Example: free trade and protectionism--3rd, Transformation of the functions of calculation into reality--The pretended calculus of pleasures and pains; and doctrines of optimism and pessimism.

VII

HISTORICAL NOTES 391

I. Greek Ethic and its ingenuousness--II. Importance of Christianity for Ethic--The three tendencies that result from it: utilitarianism, rigorism, and psychologism--Hobbes, Spinoza--English Ethic--Idealistic Philosophy--III. E. Kant and his affirmation of the ethical principle--Contradictions of Kant as to the concept of the useful, of prudence, of happiness, etc.--Errors that derive from it in his Ethic--IV. Points for a Philosophy of Economy--The inferior appetitive faculty--Problem of politics and Machiavellism--Doctrine of the passions--Hegel and the concept of the useful--Fichte and the elaboration of the Kantian Ethic--V. The problem of the useful and of morality in the thinkers of the nineteenth century--Extrinsic union of Ethic and of economic Science, from antiquity to the nineteenth century--Philosophic questions arising from a more intimate contact between the two--VII. Theories of the hedonistic calculus: from Maupertuis to Hartmann.

SECOND SECTION

THE ETHICAL PRINCIPLE

CRITIQUE OF MATERIALISTIC AND OF FORMALISTIC ETHIC 425

Various meanings of "formal" and "material"--The ethical principle as formal (universal) and not material (contingent)--Reduction of material Ethic to utilitarian Ethic--Expulsion of material principles--Benevolence, love, altruism, etc.; and critique of them--Social organism, State, interest of the species, etc. Critique of them--Material religious principles. Critique of them--"Formal" as statement of a merely logical demand--Critique of a formal Ethic with this meaning: tautologism--Tautological principles: ideal, chief good, duty, etc. Critique of them--Tautological significance of certain formulæ, material in appearance--Conversion of tautological Ethic into material and utilitarian Ethic--In what sense Ethic should be formal; and in what other sense material.

THE ETHICAL FORM AS ACTUALIZATION OF THE SPIRIT IN UNIVERSAL 440

Tautological Ethic, and its partial or discontinuous connection with Philosophy--Rejection of both these conceptions--The ethical form as volition of the universal--The universal as the Spirit (Reality, Liberty, etc.)--Moral actions as volitions of the Spirit--Critique of antimoralism--Confused tendency of tautological, material, religious formulæ in relation to the Ethic of the Spirit--The Ethic of the Spirit and religious Ethic.

III

HISTORICAL NOTES 452

I. Merit of the Kantian Ethic--The predecessors of Kant--Defect of that Ethic: agnosticism--Critique of Hegel and of others--Kant and the concept of freedom--Fichte and Hegel--Ethic in the nineteenth century.

THIRD PART

LAWS

LAWS AS PRODUCTS OF THE INDIVIDUAL 465

Definition of law--Philosophical and empirical concept of society--Laws as individual product: programmes of individual life--Exclusion of the character of constriction: critique of this concept--Identical characters of individual and social laws--Individual laws as the sole real in ultimate analysis--Critique of the division of laws into judicial and social, and into the sub-classes of these. Empiricity of every division of laws--Extension of the concept of laws.

THE CONSTITUTIVE ELEMENTS OF LAWS. CRITIQUE OF PERMISSIVE LAWS AND OF NATURAL LAW 481

The volitional character and the character of class--Distinction of laws from the so-called laws of nature--Implication of the second in the first--Distinction of laws from practical principles--Laws and single acts--Identity of imperative, prohibitive, and permissive laws--Permissive character of every law and impermissive character of every principle--Changeability of laws--Empirical considerations as to modes of change--Critique of the eternal Code or natural right--Natural right as the new right--Natural right as Philosophy of the practical--Critique of natural right--Theory of natural right persisting in judicial judgments and problems.

III

UNREALITY OF LAW AND REALITY OF EXECUTION. FUNCTION OF LAW IN THE PRACTICAL SPIRIT 497

Law as abstract and unreal volition--Ineffectually of laws and effectuality of practical principles--Exemplificatory explanation--Doctrines against the utility of laws--Their unmaintainability--Unmaintainability of confutations of them--Empirical meaning of these controversies--Necessity of laws--Laws as preparation for action--Analogy between practical and theoretical Spirit: practical laws and empirical concepts--The promotion of order in reality and in representation--Origin of the concept of plan or design.

CONFUSION BETWEEN LAWS AND PRACTICAL PRINCIPLES. CRITIQUE OF PRACTICAL LEGALISM AND OF JESUITIC MORALITY 511

Transformation of principles into practical laws: legalism--Genesis of the concept of the practically licit and indifferent--Its consequence: the arbitrary--Ethical legalism as a simple special case of the practical--Critique of the practically indifferent--Contests of rigorists and of latitudinarians and their common error--Jesuitic morality as doctrine of fraud on moral law--Concept of legal fraud--Absurdity of fraud against oneself and against the moral conscience--Jesuitic morality not explainable by mere legalism--Jesuitic morality as alliance of legalism with theological utilitarianism--Distinction between Jesuitic practice and doctrine.

JUDICIAL ACTIVITY AS GENERICALLY PRACTICAL ACTIVITY (ECONOMIC) 526

Legislative activity as generically practical--Vanity of disputes as to the character of institutions, whether economic or ethical: punishment, marriage, State, etc.--Legislative activity as economic--Judicial activity: its economic character: its consequent identity with economic activity--Non-recognition of economic form, and meaning of the problem as to distinction between morality and rights--Theories of co-action and of exteriority, as distinctive characteristics: critique of them--Moralistic theories of rights: critique--Duality of positive and ideal rights, historical and natural rights, etc.; absurd attempts at unification and co-ordination--Value of all these attempts as confused glimpse of amoral character of rights--Confirmations of this character in ingenuous conscience--Comparison between rights and language. Grammar and codes--Logic and language; morality and rights--History of language as literary and artistic history--History of rights as political and social history.

HISTORICAL NOTES 543