The beginnings: Socrates [32] Epicureanism and Stoicism. The ethic of resignation [35] Plato’s abstract basic principle of the ethical. The ethic of world-negation [40] Aristotle. Instruction about virtue in place of ethics [42] The ideal of the civilised State in Plato and Aristotle [47] Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius [52] The optimistic-ethical world-view of the later Stoicism [57] VI. OPTIMISTIC WORLD-VIEW AND ETHICS IN THE RENAISSANCE AND POST-RENAISSANCE PERIODS [61] Belief in progress and ethics [61] Christian and Stoic elements in modern ethics [64] VII. LAYING THE FOUNDATION OF ETHICS IN THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES [71] Hartley, Holbach. Devotion as enlightened egoism [71] Hobbes, Locke, Helvetius, Bentham [75] Altruism as a natural quality. Hume, Adam Smith [80] The English ethic of self-perfecting [84] Shaftesbury, An optimistic-ethical nature-philosophy [87] VIII. LAYING THE FOUNDATIONS OF CIVILIZATION IN THE AGE OF RATIONALISM [90] The mentality and the achievements of the ethical belief in progress [90] Obstacles to the reform movement. The French Revolution [99] The undermining of the rationalistic world-view [102] IX. THE OPTIMISTIC-ETHICAL WORLD-VIEW IN KANT [106] Kant’s ethics, deepened, but lacking content [106] Kant’s attempt to reach an ethical world-view [110] X. NATURE-PHILOSOPHY AND WORLD-VIEW IN SPINOZA AND LEIBNIZ [116] Spinoza’s attempt to reach an optimistic-ethical nature-philosophy [116] Leibniz’s optimistic-ethical world-view side by side with nature-philosophy [122] XI. J. G. FICHTE’S OPTIMISTIC-ETHICAL WORLD-VIEW [125] Speculative philosophy and Gnosticism [125] Fichte’s speculative founding of an ethic and of optimism [126] Fichte’s mysticism of activity incapable of being carried through [131] XII. SCHILLER; GOETHE; SCHLEIERMACHER [136] Schiller’s ethical world-view: Goethe’s world-view based on nature-philosophy [136] Schleiermacher’s attempt at a nature-philosophy [138] XIII. HEGEL’S SUPRA-ETHICAL OPTIMISTIC WORLD-VIEW [141] Ethics in Hegel’s nature-philosophy, and in his philosophy of history [141] Hegel’s supra-ethical world-view. His belief in progress [145] XIV. THE LATER UTILITARIANISM, BIOLOGICAL AND SOCIOLOGICAL ETHICS [150] Beneke, Feuerbach, Laas, Auguste Comte, John Stuart Mill [150] Darwin and Spencer [153] The weak points in biological and sociological utilitarianism [156] Sociological ethics and socialism. Mechanical belief in progress [160] XV. SCHOPENHAUER AND NIETZSCHE [165] Schopenhauer. An ethic of world- and life-denial [165] Absorption of ethics in world- and life-denial [171] Nietzsche’s criticism of current ethics [174] Nietzsche’s ethic of higher life-affirmation [177] XVI. THE ISSUE OF THE WESTERN STRUGGLE FOR A WORLD-VIEW [181]