The Origin of the Knowledge of Right and WrongBrentano, Franz
Philosophy
The Origin of the Knowledge of Right and Wrong
Brentano, Franz
Ethics
It is true that some who have sought here have yet failed to find. We
saw (cf. note 23) how Sigwart conceives the nature of the judgment. To
this, he teaches, there belongs a relation of ideas to one another,
and along with this a feeling of obligation respecting this connexion.
(Cf. sections 14 and 31, espec. 4 and 5.) Such a feeling therefore,
always exists even in the case of the blindest prejudice. It is then
abnormal, but is held (as Sigwart expressly explains) to be normal and
of universal validity. And what now in contrast to this case, is given
in the case of insight? Sigwart replies that its evidence consists
in the same feeling (cf. e.g. section 3) which now, however, is not
merely held to be normal and universally valid, but is really normal
and universally valid.
It seems to me that the weakness of this theory is at once apparent;
and it is on many grounds to be rejected.
1. The peculiar nature of insight, the clearness and evidence of
certain judgments from which their truth is inseparable has little
or nothing to do with any feeling of compulsion. It may well happen
that at a given moment I cannot refrain from so judging, yet none the
less the essence of its clearness does not consist in the feeling of
compulsion, and no consciousness of an obligation so to judge could,
as such, afford security as to its truth. He who disbelieves in every
form of indeterminism in respect of judging, regards all judgments
under the circumstances in which they were passed as necessary, but he
does not--and with indisputable right--regard all of them as on that
account true.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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