Booklover — Ethics: Past, Present, Future

Column Editor: Donna Jacobs (Retired, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, SC 29425) <donna.jacobs55@gmail.com>

“In our days morality has ceased to be a matter of such unquestionable certainty, and has been drawn into the wave of disintegration which is passing over our minds.” — Rudolph Eucken

Is this a foreshadowing, or does every generation of thinkers, philosophers, and writers see society in such a light? This reads like it is written for today, but in actuality it was penned by Rudolph Eucken in 1913 as part of a series of lectures. “Ethics and Modern Thought: A Theory of Their Relations” was the title of the Deem Lectures delivered by Eucken at the New York University from the end of February to early March of 1913. At the time Eucken was a Senior Professor of Philosophy at the University of Jena located in Jena, Germany.

Rudolf Christoph Eucken was awarded the 1908 Nobel Prize in Literature “in recognition of his earnest search for truth, his penetrating power of thought, his wide range of vision, and the warmth and strength in presentation with which in his numerous works he has vindicated and developed an idealistic philosophy of life.” These descriptors are acutely evident in these lectures. (My electronic highlighter was busy, as I needed to punctuate numerous passages as I read.) Oddly, even Eucken might have recognized this as he stated that the Deem Lectures “appeal less to students and philosophers than to the cultured public at large.” Maybe his insight is critical and the accolades worth dissection. The relevance or connection to a view of present times will at times seem eerie as this analysis moves forward.

If each title in the document represents an individual lecture then there were six. Their titles are:

I: The Ethical Problem in the Present Time

II: The Ethical Principle

III: A Defence of the Ethical Principle

IV: Evolution of the Ethical Principle

V: Morality and Religion

VI: The Present Status of Morality.

Let’s proceed by pairing quotes to accolades.

“His earnest search for truth”:

I: “Many of our contemporaries are of opinion that the revelations of modern science and the claims of modern life have destroyed the foundations of morality and made it untenable in the old sense.”

III: “Great shocks and strong emotions often produce new convictions or set free new forces within us.”

IV: “Morality undoubtedly has much to do in relation to our fellow-men; but does it not also find great tasks in the culture of the soul, — in spiritual work for the world, as expressed in science and art?”

“His penetrating power of thought”:

II: “The requirements thus formulated lead to a system of ethics. Its fundamental doctrine is man’s power to rise by free action to the higher plane of cosmic life, and to develop it with all the strength of his soul.”

III: “Our life thus becomes a struggle between freedom and fate; and to this struggle it chiefly owes its expansion and greatness.”

IV: “How often have the nations longed to return to simpler and more innocent beginnings!”

VI: “Another disadvantage for inner culture is the rapid pace of life, as compared to former times. While we are hastening from moment to moment, we have neither repose nor leisure for the culture of our inner man, for the development of a character, a personality. We are more and more in danger of being absorbed by the whirlpool of life, and robbed of all possibility of self-conscious action. Other perils also beset us. In our thirst for achievement and success, our moral judgment is often repressed; the accentuation of the battle of life can even make us indifferent to the moral quality of the ways and means employed by us. All this necessarily weakens morality, and makes it appear unimportant and shadowy.” (A philosopher’s perspective from 1913!)

“His wide range of vision”:

I: “The “social” ethics thus developed are further enhanced by the growing conviction that the traditional form of life in the community is capable — nay needful — of fundamental changes.”

II: “All this implies a great task for man. He is an imperfect and unfinished being, full of contradictions. He has to seek and achieve genuine life; he must penetrate from the sphere of effects to that of their causes; he must recognise the great cosmic movement as a personal concern of his own, and must thus give meaning and value to his life and aspiration.”

VI: “Every party and faction preaches some ideal of its own, the attainment of which will, it believes, unite men, making them good and happy. But these individual aims are very different in character; they are a cause of mutual hindrance, and they divide mankind in that which should be a means of union.”

“The warmth and strength in presentation”:

III: “The statesman wishing to raise his people from within, builds on such a capacity for inner growth, and believes in the realisation of new possibilities; so does the educator in his efforts to cultivate and ennoble men’s souls. Art and religion are ever at work, in order to discover new possibilities and bring them home to man.”

IV: “Moral life can quite well unite earnestness and joy, reverence and love — earnestness and reverence towards the superior majesty of a higher power operative to us, joy and love arising from the mighty presence of this higher power within us.”

“An idealistic philosophy of life.”

Eucken’s final statement in Lecture VI: “We believe also in the development in America of such moral strength as will successfully overcome all conflicts and lead to splendid results, for the benefit not only of the American nation, but of all mankind.”

Sometimes you just have to let the words of a laureate speak for themselves.