The Origin of the Knowledge of Right and Wrong

by Franz Brentano

[29.] We must first inquire: When is anything better than anything else and recognized by us as better? and what is meant by “the better” at all?

The answer now lies ready to hand though not in such a way as to render it unnecessary to exclude a very possible error. If by “good” is meant that which is worthy of being loved for its own sake, then by “better” appears to be meant that which is worthy of being loved with a greater love. But is this really so? What is meant by “with greater love”? Is it spatial magnitude? Hardly; no one would propose to measure pleasure or displeasure in feet and inches. “The intensity of the pleasure,” some will perhaps say, “is what is meant in speaking of love as great.” According to this “better” would mean that which pleases with a more intense pleasure. But such a definition closely examined would involve the greatest absurdities. According to this view, each single case in which joy is felt in anything would seem only to admit of a certain measure of joy, whereas one would naturally think that it could not possibly be reprehensible to rejoice in what is really good to the fullest extent possible. Or, as we say, “with all one’s heart.” Descartes has already observed that the act of loving (when directed towards what is good at all) can never be too intense.[36] And he is manifestly right. Were it otherwise what cautiousness should we not be called upon to exercise considering the limits of our mental strength! Every time one wished to rejoice over something good, an anxious survey would be necessary respecting other existing goods in order that the measure of proportion to our total strength might in no way be exceeded. And if one believes in a God, understanding thereby the Infinite Good, the Ideal of all ideals, then, since a man, even with his whole soul and strength can only love God with an act of love of finite intensity he will therefore be compelled to love every other good with an infinitely small degree of intensity, and, since this is impossible, must cease as a matter of fact to love it at all.

All this is manifestly absurd.

[30.] And yet it must be said that the better is that which is rightly loved with a greater love, which is rightly more pleasing, though in quite another sense. The “more” refers not to the relation of intensity between the two acts, but rather to a peculiar species of phenomena belonging to the general class of pleasure and displeasure, i.e., to the phenomena of choice. Thereby are meant relating acts which in their peculiar nature are known to every one in experience. In the province of ideas there is nothing analogous. In the province of judgment there are, it is true, alongside the simple, subjectless propositions, predicative judgments which are acts of a relative character, but this resemblance is very imperfect. The case here which has most similarity is that of a decision respecting a dialectically propounded question: “Is this true or false?” in which a sort of preference is given to one above the other. But even here it is always something true which is, so to speak, preferred to something false, never something more true over something less true. Whatever is true is true in a like degree, but whatever is good is not good in equal degree, and by “better” nothing else is meant than what, when compared with another good, is preferable, i.e. something which for its own sake, is preferred with a right preference. For the rest a somewhat wider usage of language allows us also to speak of a good as “better” over against a bad or purely indifferent, or even to call something bad over against something still worse “the better.” We then say not of course that it is good, but still better than the other.

This shortly in explanation of the notion of the better.

[31.] Next the question: How do we know that anything is really the better? Assuming the existence of simple knowledge of things as good and bad, we appear, so analogy suggests, to derive this insight from certain acts of preferring which have the character of rightness. For, like the simple exercise of pleasure, so also the act of preferring is sometimes of a lower or impulsive, and sometimes of a higher kind, and like the evident judgment, is qualified as right. The cases in point are, however, of such a nature that many might say, and perhaps with a better right, that it is analytical judgments which furnish us here with the means of progress, and that instead of our learning the preferability from the actual preferences, the preferences have the qualification of rightness because they already presume the recognition of the standard of preferability.[37]

Chiefly belonging to this class are obviously (1) the case where we prefer something good, and recognized as good, to something bad, and recognized as bad. Also (2) the case where we prefer the existence of something recognized as good to its non-existence, or the non-existence of something recognized as bad to its existence.

This case embraces in itself a series of important cases, as the case where we prefer a good to the same good with an admixture of the bad; and, on the other hand, where we prefer something bad, with an admixture of good, to the same bad purely for its own sake. Further, the cases in which we prefer the whole of a good to its part, and again, the part of something bad to its whole. Aristotle has already called attention to the fact that in the case of the good the sum is always better than the separate parts which together make up its sum. Such a case of summation presents itself wherever a state has a certain permanence. The same amount of joy which endures an hour is better than if it only lasted for a moment. Whoever denies this, like Epicurus when he would console us on account of the mortality of the soul, may easily be led into still more striking absurdities. For then an hour’s torture would be no worse than that of a moment. And, by combining both these propositions, we should have to assume that an entire life full of joy with a single moment of pain is in no way preferable to an entire life full of pain with a single moment of joy. This is a result at which not only every sound mind in general would demur, but also one respecting which Epicurus in particular, expressly asserts the contrary.

Closely related to this is the case (3) where one good is preferred to another, which, while forming no part of the first, is yet similar in every respect to one of its parts. It is not merely by adding a good to the same good but also by adding it to a good which is in every respect similar that we get a better for total. The case is analogous when to a similar bad another bad is thought of as added. When therefore, for example, a fine picture is seen, the first time as a whole, the second time only partially though exactly in the same way, we must then say that the first view, considered in itself, is better: Or, when one imagines something that is good and a second time not only imagines it even as perfectly as before, but also loves it, this latter sum of psychical acts is then something better.

Cases of difference in degree belong also to this third class, and are especially worthy of mention. If one good, e.g. one joy is in every respect quite equal to another, only more intense, then the preference which is given to the more intense is qualified as right, the more intense is the better. Conversely, the bad which is more intense, e.g. a more intense pain, is worse. That is to say: the degree of intensity corresponds with the distance from the zero point, and the distance of the greater degree of intensity from zero is compounded of its distance from the weaker degree of intensity plus the distance of this from zero. We have, therefore, really to do with a kind of addition, a view which has been disputed.