The Origin of the Knowledge of Right and WrongBrentano, Franz
Philosophy
The Origin of the Knowledge of Right and Wrong
Brentano, Franz
Ethics
Despite a certain analogy the confusion is hard to understand. There
are people who recognize both the goodness of God and the wickedness
of the devil, the being of Ormuzd and the being of Ahriman, with an
equal degree of conviction, and yet, while prizing the nature of the
one above all else, they feel themselves absolutely repelled by that
of the other. Since we love knowledge and hate error it is, of course,
proper that those _judgments_ we hold to be right (and this is true
of all those judgments which we ourselves make) are for this very
reason dear to us, i.e. we estimate them in some way or other through
feeling. But who on this account would be misled into regarding the
judgments themselves which are loved as acts of loving?. The confusion
would be almost as gross as if we should fail to distinguish wife and
child, money and possessions, from the activity which is directed
towards these, inasmuch they are the objects of affection. Cf. also
what has been said (note 21) with regard to Windelband, where,
misunderstanding Descartes, he ascribes to him the same teaching;
further, note 26 (on the unity of the idea of the good) as well as
what is urged by Sigwart in the note (in part much to the point) on
Windelband (_Logic_, vol. i. chap. ii. p. 156 seq.). To those who,
despite all that has been said, still wish further arguments for the
distinction between the second and third fundamental classes, I may,
perhaps, be allowed to refer them, by anticipation, to my _Descriptive
Psychology_, which I have alluded to in the preface as an almost
completed work, and which will appear if not as a continuation, yet
still as a further development of my _Psychology from the Empirical
Standpoint_.
As against Windelband, I here add the following observations:
1. It is false and a serious oversight, as he himself will be
convinced on reading again in my _Psychology_, vol. i. p. 262, when
he (p. 172) makes me assert, and that too as a quotation from my own
work, that “love and hate” is not an appropriate term for the third
fundamental class.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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