An ethical philosophy of life presented in its main outlinesAdler, Felix
Religion
An ethical philosophy of life presented in its main outlines
Adler, Felix
Ethics; Philosophy, Modern
Surveying Bluntschli’s doctrine as a whole, it is clear that his
empirical conception of the state leaves it a purely secular
institution concerned with externals, and not really related to the
inner life, certainly not a station in the development of personality.
He practically acknowledges as much when he says that the state is man
writ large, and the church woman writ large; that the state represents
the masculine principle, the church the feminine principle. For the
feminine, according to him, is the spiritual principle. The state deals
with externals; to the church is reserved the prerogative of entering
into and transforming the inner life.[93]
But what shall be the motive force for the creation of an international
society? I hold that the sense of national sin, or of national guilt,
must supply the motive force. At present all the more advanced nations
are to be censured because of their pride. Germany prides itself on
its science and its efficiency, England on its political liberalism,
France on its logical conception of equality, America on its democratic
individualism. Each of the great nations dwells complacently upon
its fair traits, and vaunts its special type of civilization as that
which should rightfully prevail among mankind generally. The national
defects, acknowledged perhaps by the critical few, are glozed over.
Indeed the consciousness of a collective national character though
latent is not yet distinct. It must be evoked. National self-knowledge
must be promoted by the leaders and teachers of mankind, and with it
must come, as in the case of the individual, the conscious recognition
of deep defects—in the case of Germany the narrowness of the conception
of the expert:[94] in the case of England the discrepancy between
political liberalism as applied to the white inhabitants of the British
Isles and of the self-governing dominions on the one hand, and the
“benevolent despotism” exercised over the subject millions of India on
the other; in America the effacement of true individualism under the
crushing pressure of mass opinion, etc.
Moreover not only will the defects be admitted, but their detrimental
influence on other peoples will have to be frankly avowed—every nation
must cry its _Peccavi_—the effect for instance on Europe of the French
love of glory, the effect of the efficiency notion of the Germans
as it is at present penetrating all other nations,[95] and in the
still wider view the effect of Western civilization as a whole on the
stationary civilization of China, on Egypt, on the myriads of Africa.
The civilized peoples of the earth have sinned their sins and are best
seen when we consider:
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