The thesis of moral abstractionism against the concept of the useful--The useful as means, or as theoretic fact--Technical and hypothetical imperatives--Critique: the useful is a practical fact --The useful as the egoistic or the immoral--Critique: the useful is amoral--The useful as ethical minimum--Critique: the useful is premoral--Desperate attempt: the useful as inferior practical conscience--Confirmation of the autonomy of the useful. IV RELATION BETWEEN ECONOMIC AND ETHICAL FORMS 348 Economic and ethic as double degree of the practical--Errors arising from conceiving them as co-ordinated--Disinterested actions: critique--Vain polemic conducted with such Supposition against utilitarianism--Actions morally indifferent, obligatory, supererogatory, etc. Critique--Comparison with the relation between art and philosophy--Other erroneous conceptions of modes of action--Pleasure and economic activity, happiness and virtue--Pleasure and pain and feeling--Coincidence of duty with pleasure--Critique of rigorism or asceticism--Relation of happiness and virtue--Critique of the subordination of pleasure to morality--No empire of morality over the forms of the spirit--Non-existence of other practical forms; and impossibility of subdivision of the two established. V THE PHILOSOPHY OF ECONOMY AND THE SO-CALLED SCIENCE OF ECONOMY 364 Problem of the relations between Philosophy and Science of economy --Unreality of the laws and concepts of economic Science--Economic Science founded on empirical concepts but not empirical or descriptive--Absoluteness of its laws--Their mathematical nature--Its principles and their character of arbitrary postulates and definitions--Its utility--Comparison of Economy with Mechanic, and reason for its exclusion from ethical, æsthetic, and logical facts--Errors of philosophism and historicism in Economy--The two degenerations: extreme abstractism and empiristical disaggregation--Glance at the history of the various directions of Economy--Meaning of the judgment of Hegel as to economic Science. VI CRITIQUE OF THE CONFUSIONS BETWEEN ECONOMIC SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY OF ECONOMY 382 Adoption of the economic method and formulæ on the part of Philosophy--Errors that derive from it--1st, Negation of philosophy for economy--2nd, Universal value attributed to empirical concepts. Example: free trade and protectionism--3rd, Transformation of the functions of calculation into reality--The pretended calculus of pleasures and pains; and doctrines of optimism and pessimism. VII HISTORICAL NOTES 391