The Aesthetic Element in Morality and Its Place in an Utilitarian Theory of Morals (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from The Aesthetic Element in Morality and Its Place in an Utilitarian Theory of Morals

Moral systems may be divided into two great classes, teleological (to use a happy term introduced by Prof. Paulsen) and if we may venture upon another inv novation in terminology deontologz'cal. The former looks upon all morality as the product of an ideal, the latter as having its essence in the feeling of obligation; the one starts out from the idea of the good, the other from the idea of ought or duty; the one is interested before all else in the inquiry as to the worth of the various possible ends of human activity, the other as to the origin and validity of the idea of obligation. Among representatives of the former class, two different sorts of ideals have been proposed, the one by the Utilitarians the egoistic and the altruistic who present as the final end of action the happiness of the individual, or of mankind respectively; the other by those who hold up character as the proper end, or as it is sometimes termed self-culture, or self-realization. This is identical With what the Eighteenth Century called perfection, but the term is extremely objectionable as substituting for the name of a definite quality, a word which merely signifies the agreement of things in general with any ideal that may have been previously formed of them. Among recent writers this position has been cham pioned by Prof. Paulsen Where the ideal in question is presented as recommending itself purely on its own merits, and by the late Thomas Bill Green, Who backs it up by metaphysical considerations Which give his system a touch of the deontological. Of the second class.

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