History of European Morals From Augustus to Charlemagne (Vol. 1 of 2)Lecky, William Edward Hartpole
Philosophy
History of European Morals From Augustus to Charlemagne (Vol. 1 of 2)
Lecky, William Edward Hartpole
Ethics; Europe -- Moral conditions
the first school is that its searching analysis leaves no mental
phenomenon unresolved, and its attraction is the extreme simplicity it can
attain. The second school multiplies faculties or original principles,
concentrates its attention mainly upon the nature of our understanding,
and asserts very strongly the initiative force both of our will and of our
intellect.
We find this connection between a philosophy based upon the senses, and a
morality founded upon utility from the earliest times. Aristotle was
distinguished among the ancients for the emphasis with which he dwelt upon
the utility of virtue, and it was from the writings of Aristotle that the
schoolmen derived the famous formulary which has become the motto of the
school of Locke. Locke himself devoted especial research to the refutation
of the doctrine of a natural moral sense, which he endeavoured to
overthrow by a catalogue of immoral practices that exist among savages,
and the hesitation he occasionally exhibited in his moral doctrine
corresponds not unfaithfully to the obscurity thrown over his metaphysics
by the admission of reflection as a source of ideas. If his opponent
Leibnitz made pleasure the object of moral action, it was only that
refined pleasure which is produced by the contemplation of the happiness
of others. When, however, Condillac and his followers, removing reflection
from the position Locke had assigned it, reduced the philosophy of
sensation to its simplest expression, and when the Scotch and German
writers elaborated the principles of the opposite school, the moral
tendencies of both were indisputably manifested. Everywhere the philosophy
of sensation was accompanied by the morals of interest, and the ideal
philosophy, by an assertion of the existence of a moral faculty, and every
influence that has affected the prevailing theory concerning the origin of
our ideas, has exercised a corresponding influence upon the theories of
ethics.
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