The Philosophy of the Practical: Economic and Ethic

by Benedetto Croce

Fichte and the elaboration of the Kantian Ethic.

Fichte, in re-elaborating the Kantian philosophy, showed the relation between pleasure and duty in a manner that came very near to the truth. He gave precedence to what he called the empirical over the moral man, the former corresponding entirely to the merely utilitarian or economic. What, asks Fichte, will be his maxim of action at this stage? "As there is no other impulse in his consciousness save the natural, and as this is directed only toward enjoyment and has pleasure for its motive, that maxim cannot but be to choose what promises the maximum of pleasure in intensity and extension; that is, the maxim of his own happiness. This may likewise be sought in the pleasure of others by means of the sympathetic impulses; but the ultimate scope of his action always remains the satisfaction of those impulses and pleasures which arise from it, and therefore, his own happiness. Man at this stage is an intelligent animal." "But," he continues, "it is a fault to remain here, and man must raise himself to a stage at which he enjoys an altogether different liberty; he must be free, not only formaliter, but also materialiter, that is, he must attain to the moral stage."[19] That first stage, then, is formal freedom, and is no longer considered a pathological condition of the spirit, or as that merely technical knowledge of which Kant speaks. This would constitute no small progress, if Fichte had been conscious of all the richness of the concept of which he had caught a glimpse, and had made it fructify. But it seems that he was not aware of this, and certainly he took no advantage of it whatever.

The problem of the useful and of morality in the thinkers of the nineteenth century.

V. The inventive genius of modern Ethic is exhausted with these thinkers. Their successors have reproduced the old situations, one after the other. Some, while accepting the Kantian morality, wished to temper and correct its exaggerations, which was not possible, save by a more profound speculative vision of the relation between pleasure and good, the useful and the moral; whereas they believed that they could attain to it by also taking account of pleasure and of happiness, and by conceiving a doctrine of happiness or eudæmonology side by side with Ethic, but subordinate to it (in Italy: Galluppi and Rosmini). Schiller had already recognized in Kant's time the unilaterality of Kant, and had made it the object of criticism and of epigram, which, however, does not mean that he had truly and properly corrected its errors. Others occupied themselves in various ways with the enumeration and juxtaposition of the principles: thus, for instance, Schopenhauer makes compassion arise beside egoism, which then divides into benevolence and justice; and Herbart, although he excludes the useful, because, according to him, "it refers to a point external to itself,"[20] enumerates five practical ideas that are not all truly moral. The affinity both of Herbart and of Schopenhauer, with Shaftesbury, Hutcheson and English and Scottish psychologism, is clear. The study of the practical ideas of Herbart is not without interest as an unconscious affirmation of the necessity of the economic principle. The first of these, indeed, internal freedom, consists in being able to achieve with our own strength the model that we propose to ourselves, and is liberty, but not yet moral liberty. "To be able to decide according to motives" (says Herbart on one occasion) "is already a sign of psychical health: to decide according to the best motives is the condition of morality."[21] The second of the practical ideas, that of perfection, is concerned precisely with the strength of the will, taken in itself, and resembles a combination of the Hellenic virtues of fortitude and temperance. Here willing is considered in itself, independently of its objects, and in this consideration there is no other difference, save their strength, between the various Willings: the greater this is, the more it is admired; weakness displeases and strength pleases the practical judgment, and this even when it is unjust, iniquitous and wicked, and notwithstanding such vices.[22] Lotze, following Herbart, determines as requisites of actions, that they must be possible, energetic, conscientious on the one hand, and on the other, consequent, habitual, individual, stating that these two series of predicates apply equally to moral and immoral actions.[23]—He does not think it worth while to take count of the English utilitarians and post-Kantian intuitionists, or of their French, Italian, and German imitators; because, just as the appearance of a Hobbes, of a Hume, or of a Shaftesbury, is important in their time, so the appearance of a Bentham or of a Spencer out of their time is insignificant, for these latter amuse themselves with the useful, with association and evolution (which according to them should become the socially useful), and with the double principle of egoism and of altruism. Stuart Mill alone can afford some interest, when he says (with that mental inconclusiveness which has seemed to many to be acuteness and equilibrium) that moral pleasures differ from the sensual, not only in degree, but also in genus and in quality (in kind); and that justice is a class of socially useful actions that arouses feelings themselves also different, not only in degree, but also in genus and in quality (in kind), from those caused by useful actions. In short, the philosophy of the nineteenth century has not only been unable to progress, but has not even been able to maintain itself on a level with the practical doctrines of Fichte and of Hegel, in which a glimpse was caught of the relation of first and second practical degree, and there was a tendency to reconcile passion and ethicity.

Extrinsic union of Ethic and of economic Science, from antiquity to the nineteenth century.

VI. Certainly economic science, owing to its empirico-quantitative character, already noted, was not made to fill the void and to furnish a more positive and exact concept of the useful. The contact between Economy and Philosophy remained for a time extrinsic, since economic Science appeared in treatises upon the Philosophy of the practical, together with the other juridical and historical matter, which it was customary to include with it. The precedent for such a union could be found even in Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethic, which supplies certain notions as to the concept of price and value. Considerations on the same argument abound in the Scholastics, especially in St. Thomas, whose Oeconomica always forms part of his Ethic, as the doctrine for the government of the family. Finally, there is an ample discussion of the subject in the treatises of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which took the name of natural Rights. It happened that the English moralists of the eighteenth century were also led to occupy themselves with Economy and the economists with Ethic, owing to the juxtaposition of the two concepts for didascalic reasons and for University convenience. Thus Hutcheson developed Economy, in his Short Introduction to Moral Philosophy (1747); and the Essays of Hume are occupied with moral and economic questions; and Adam Smith is the author, not only of The Wealth of Nations, but also of The Theory of the Moral Feelings, almost two parts of a Philosophy of the practical. The importance of economic studies had become so palpable at that time, that toward the end of the century, Buhle was led to include them in the history of philosophy (and we believe that he was the first). He exposes at length in his work the ideas of Hume, of Smith, of Stewart, attributing it as a merit to the English writers to have reduced that material to philosophy by a method of treatment without example (he said) in previous centuries.[24] Finally, Hegel dedicated certain important paragraphs of his Philosophy of Law, in the section dealing with civil society,[25] to the "system of wants," or Economy. The cult of Economy has rather increased than diminished in the nineteenth century and the much-discussed social problem (especially capitalism and socialism) has not been without a certain influence upon treatises of Ethic, where, if we rarely find statements that are strictly economic, there is always plenty of chatter about property and production and the relations between the working and capitalistic class.

Philosophical questions arising from a more intimate contact between the two.

But a more intimate bond could not take place, save when attempts to understand the material of science and to place it in the system of the spirit were united with economic Science, properly so called. For since that science is occupied with human actions and appears to give advice as to conduct, in what relation can it possibly stand to Ethic, which is also occupied with actions and also gives advice?—Such a question was in a certain way already implied in the mediæval idea of a justum pretium, to be placed beside the effective price, which is realized according to the knowledge and convenience of each; it forms the kernel of the debate between the subjective and the objective concept of value, that is, between the purely economic consideration and another resulting from moral exigencies, between the value that is, and that which in a certain way should be. It began to wax ardent, with the accusation, of being theoreticians of egoism, hurled at the great English economists, Smith and Ricardo; this accusation, taken up and modified by others, became accepted as the true and proper designation of the function of Economy, which should accordingly be that of studying human actions in their exclusively abstract, egoistic aspect. But, since abstraction is not full reality, the false task assigned to Economy called for the aid of the doctors. Such were the French economists, seized with the mania of teaching generosity to the cold Britons (Blanqui, etc.); such too were the Germans, who wished to induce Economy to mend its ways and to become conscious of its lofty duties towards the human race (Knies); such, finally, were the Christians and Catholics, who thought to purify or to exorcise that worldly and diabolical science by mingling with it ethical and economical considerations. It was rarely suspected that economic facts, as such, are neither egoistic nor altruistic, neither moral nor immoral; and when it was desired to philosophize the subject, some one got out of the difficulty by enumerating five groups of human actions, four egoistic and only one moral: the search for the satisfaction of one's own conscience, with the fear of blame attached (Wagner). The problem, especially in Austria, passed from the hands of the mathematicians into those of the psychologists. These have undertaken to seek out the resemblance and the difference between economic and ethical values. But on the psychological ground (as we have already remarked when discussing intuitionistic solutions), far from solving the antithesis, philosophy is dissolved. The mathematicians on the other hand, that is to say the economists, who employ the quantitative method, fascinated with the evidence of this procedure and failing to realize that it is empty evidence, instead of limiting themselves to the construction of their most useful formulæ, increase the confusion by beginning to philosophize in the strangest manner; as is to be observed in the case of Pareto, one of the most acute and learned of contemporary economists. In one of his recent writings he exposes the method of economic science with a string of propositions such as these: "Il faut faire une opération de séparation.... Cette première opération accomplie, ... il est nécessaire de substituer par abstraction, des conceptions simples, au moins relativement, aux objets réels extrêmement complexes.... Mais la science n'est réellement liée à une abstraction plutôt qu'à une autre.... Pour peu qu'on y trouve un avantage.... Cela ne suffit pas encore: il faut continuer à séparer et à abstraire...."

And after having thus advised us to treat facts without pity, mutilating them, grinding them down, substituting for them names or abstractions, Pareto continues undisturbed, as though all this were nothing: these theories, "telles, au moins que nous les concevons, se séparant des anciens en ce qu'elles s'attachent aux faits et non aux mots"![26] If such be the facts, what will be the words?

The theories of the hedonistic calculus: from Maupertuis to Hartmann.