A Review of the Systems of Ethics Founded on the Theory of Evolution

by Cora May Williams

[71] Affecte.

[72] Widerspruchslosigkeit.

[73] Entsprechend.

[74] Gedankenloses Denken.

[75] Gemeinsinn oder Gemeingeist, pp. 340, 410. Carneri explains this word as equivalent to the English "common-sense," but defines the latter as feeling for the general, the universal.

[76] Potenz.

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HARALD HÖFFDING

"Ethics" ("Ethik," 1887)

Ethical judgments contain an estimate of the worth of human actions. Every such estimate presupposes the existence of a need, a feeling which spurs us on to the judgment of the action, as also the existence of a standard, an ideal, according to which we judge. The motive to the ethical judgment may be called the basis of Ethics. The standard involved in the ethical judgment determines the content of Ethics, in that it decides which actions, which directions and modes of life, are to be called good in the ethical sense. The ethical basis is the subjective, the standard the objective, principle in Ethics; the character of an ethical conception depends upon this presupposed basis, the applied standard, and the relation between the two.