Retrospect

This chapter assesses the developments in France and Germany studied in the three previous chapters. The philosophical questions that emerged in and after the French Revolution were ethical and political: the viability of impartial individualism, the meaning of freedom, the relation of freedom to democracy. In Germany freedom was analysed, from Kant to Hegel, as an integral part of a deep exploration of the relation of self and world, or being. Hegel’s two theses about ethical life are reviewed. The truth to be found in them, it is argued, is that impartial individualism is untenable as a philosophical foundation for ethics. However, this truth does not impose a holistic Hegelian ethics. It may instead lead to a form of individualism that is not impartial overall: that makes room for impartiality in matters of justice, but recognizes that the agent-relative commitments and obligations of individuals to other individuals are irreducible.

Freedom and the French Revolution

Two great revolutions set the stage for late modern ethics: the French Revolution and the philosophical revolution of Kant. This chapter studies the events and conflicts of ideas in the French Revolution and its aftermath in France. It gives a narrative account of the Revolution from 1789 to 1804. Three broad ethical stances are distinguished: the feudal-Catholic ethic of the monarch and his allies, the impartial individualism of the Enlightenment, and the Rousseauian radical-democracy of the Jacobins. Under the violent political conflicts between these views lies a resilient philosophical conflict: between impartial individualism and a generic stance which this study identifies as ‘eudaimonistic holism’. The feudal-Catholic ethic and radical-democracy are two very different forms of it. Hegelian ethics will turn out to be a third.

Introduction

This is a critical study of late modern ethical thought in Europe, from the French Revolution to the advent of modernism. I shall take it that ‘late modern’ ethics starts with two revolutions: the political revolution in France and the philosophical revolution of Kant. The contrast is with ‘early modern’. Another contrast is with ‘modernism’, which I shall take to refer to trends in culture, philosophy, and politics that developed in the latter decades of the nineteenth century, and lasted into the twentieth century—perhaps to the sixties, or even to the collapse of East European socialism in the eighties....

Concluding Reflection

This chapter discusses issues which arose in this period and remain important for philosophical ethics today. The deepest of these is the contest between individualism and holism which was traced in the French Revolution and then in Hegel (Section 1). This fundamental ethical divide interacts with the metaphysics of freedom (Sections 2 and 4) and is shaped by the philosophical crisis of religion (Section 3). Section 5 turns to the ethics of freedom, and Section 6 to its politics, which centres on the relation between democracy and liberalism. Reflection on these topics must take account of the impact of modernism (Section 7), and of the epistemological effects of democracy (Section 8). A concluding reassessment is proposed by contrasting the syntheses of Hegel and Mill (Section 9), and returning in Section 10 to ask: what, then, are the foundations of ethics?

Freedom and Spirit

This chapter traces the development of Hegel’s thought from his early reactions to the French Revolution and the Enlightenment crisis of religion, through the Phenomenology of Spirit, to the Philosophy of Right. Hegel’s ethical thought propounds two deep theses. First, what he calls Moralität, the individualistic modern standpoint of freedom of conscience, can only survive within ethical life (Sittlichkeit), in which individuals are realized through their service and self-understanding in various social wholes. Second, ethical life realizes the life of spirit. Absolute idealism is the metaphysics of spirit: its fundamental concept is the dialectical identity, or unity-in-difference, of self and other. This conception of ethical life issues in a deep rethinking of religion and politics: a reconciling vision of being and freedom in the modern age.

Freedom in Kant’s Revolution

This chapter turns to the philosophical revolution of Kant. Starting from what he described as his ‘Copernican’ revolution in epistemology, it examines what he took to be its implications, negative and positive, for metaphysics, ethics, and religion. It examines Kant’s account of freedom as autonomy; his moral theory and its basis in the categorical imperative; his conception of the relation between morality and practical reason; and his ethical views and ideals. His political views are examined in relation to the ideas identified in Chapter I, particularly those of the revolutionary thinker Sieyès. In the concluding section Kant’s critical and hermeneutic stance in metaphysics and ethics is defended. It is argued, however, that while transcendental idealism is a powerful response to the problem of knowledge, it is not required for a full account of freedom, will, and reason.

Freedom and Well-Being

John Stuart Mill is, on the one hand, a man of the Enlightenment, and on the other, the greatest liberal idealist of the nineteenth century. This chapter surveys his philosophy, interpreting it as a synthesis of epistemology, metaphysics, and ethics for the modern age comparable to that of Hegel. The two syntheses are opposed in fundamental respects, notably on the question of individualism and holism, yet in both of them freedom is the governing idea. The first two sections examine Mill’s intellectual development and his naturalism. In the third section his fundamental rethinking of utilitarianism is considered. The final section considers his philosophy of freedom, which takes a Schillerian inner or spiritual freedom to be the leading essential of well-being. The implications are traced through his social and political theory, notably in On Liberty and The Subjection of Women.

Green and Sidgwick

The end of the nineteenth century saw a rethinking of German idealism led by Thomas Hill Green, and a refinement of utilitarianism by Henry Sidgwick. This chapter examines their restatements of the two great late modern syntheses: absolute idealism and utilitarian liberalism. For both, the crisis of religion was fundamental. In Green’s case this meant a return to absolute idealism, with religion at its core, and a new application to the politics of liberalism. In Sidgwick’s case it led to an implicit nihilism. Sidgwick’s analysis of normative ‘intuition’ is discussed, his thesis of the dualism of practical reason is examined, and it is pointed out that on his own penetrating account of normative warrant, neither egoism nor utilitarianism is warranted. The final section of the chapter reconsiders the role of sentiment, will, and reason as bases of impartiality.

Ethics in the Anglo-Scottish Enlightenment

Philosophical ethics in Britain was (and is) at least as much a contribution to as a reaction against the naturalism of the Enlightenment. This chapter examines Thomas Reid, Adam Smith, and Jeremy Bentham. Like Kant, Hamann, and Jacobi, Reid responds to Humean scepticism. But unlike their response, his is entirely naturalistic. Its strengths and weaknesses are examined. Ethics in Scotland was strongly sentimentalist. It culminated in Adam Smith’s Theory of the Moral Sentiments, a naturalistic account of the epistemology of evaluative and practical normativity that bases it on a phenomenology of the sentiments. It remains a contender against German accounts of will and reason. In England the most important development was the growth of utilitarianism. Jeremy Bentham was by far its most influential exponent. The third section of this chapter examines the principle of utility and considers what Bentham meant by his rejection of natural rights.

Freedom and Faith Between Kant and Hegel

This chapter considers some of the varied responses in Germany to the scepticism of Hume and the transcendental idealism of Kant. It covers Hamann, Jacobi, Schiller, and Fichte. Both Jacobi and Hamann draw on Humean scepticism to vindicate religious faith. Hamann sees sceptical distancing from everyday cognition as a route into mystical religious consciousness of the world. Schiller criticizes the elevation of ‘dignity’ at the expense of ‘grace’ in Kant’s account of autonomy. He proposes instead an ideal of freedom as moral and aesthetic wholeness. The ethical implications of this ideal are discussed. Fichte rethinks the Kantian idea that transcendental idealism is the basis of freedom: philosophy becomes rational insight into a universal content grasped mystically by religion. Influenced by Kant’s discussion of the conditions of self-awareness, Fichte argues that its precondition is mutual recognition of self and other. Mutual recognition is, in turn, the basis of rights.