Carneri again pleads, in this book, for the like right of woman with man to mental culture, and to labor which shall make her independent of the caprice of man; the good of the family alone to be regarded as the limiting factor.
The extent of Carneri's work on the subject of Ethics makes it impossible to consider minor points of his theory, such as are included, for instance, in his criticism of Hartmann, of Schopenhauer, Feuerbach, and others; or to define more clearly than has been done his relation to Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, etc. His book "Entwicklung und Glückseligkeit," published in 1886, is a collection of essays which first appeared separately in "Kosmos," and which, as such, do not hold to each other the relation of parts of an organic whole. They are chiefly a recapitulation of the views already expressed in the "Grundlegung der Ethik," with some extensions and possibly some modifications;—these last, however, chiefly of an extraneous character. In these essays Carneri demands a systematic moral training in the common school, to the end of the development of conscience, such training to be non-religious, though not anti-religious excepting in case the religion itself be seen to transgress the laws of right established by humane reason; he protests against the error of Materialism, as likewise against that of the Apriorists and the "Ideologists" or Idealists in the narrower sense of the word; and he reaffirms, defines, and further defends his standpoint as that of a "Real-idealist"; that is, of one to whom Kant is the point of departure in a farther evolution of theory. He reaffirms the oneness of the universe, so of man with nature, restates the self-identity of the individual in will and thought, limits the knowledge of man to nature as it is for us, but invests it with certainty within these bounds, and reasserts the necessity of the progress of the whole through the efforts of the many for happiness. He lays further stress upon the absence of morality, not only among the animals, in whom at least general ethical feelings, in distinction from those towards individuals, are not found, but also among savages; morality being not the incentive to, but the product of the state. From this standpoint, he combats Socialism as proposing impossible ideals, since it presupposes ethically perfect men as governing and being governed by the laws, and since it disposes of the freedom of the individual. The theory of compulsion reckons without the will of man as he is and must be. Man has no primordial rights (except, perhaps, the right to get and keep all he can); he has only rights that he has gained by the help of the state. There is no one commandment in which man's whole duty may be expressed, unless it be, perhaps, some such new rendering of Kant's words as this: Act always in such a manner that the maxims of thy will might be taken as the principle by which to render happy the greatest possible number of human beings. But this can never become a categorical imperative for all men. Morality lies in the Will to Good, which becomes in the moral, or according to Carneri's phrase, the ethical man, a second nature: his sense of duty is joy in duty, highest satisfaction of his desire for happiness. It might perhaps be claimed that Carneri, in his theory of the Conscience, has in this book laid more stress on feeling than in his others; however, it is to be recollected that, with him, thought and feeling are no distinct faculties, but that conscience means less an impulse unconscious of final ends than a self-conscious attitude or readiness of the will as the result of conviction.
Carneri's latest book, "Die Lebensführung des modernen Menschen" (1891), is practical rather than theoretical, a consideration of general problems and rules of action.
FOOTNOTES:
[65] Wirklich.
[66] Stofflichkeit; by this word Carneri designates "das Gemeinsame aller Gegenständlichkeit."
[67] An sich autonom, unterwirft sich das Leben den Cesetzen, die aus der allgemeinen Entwicklung sich ergeben.
[68] Daseinstrieb.
[69] Pp. 112, 113.
[70] Dunkle Triebe.