The Origin of the Knowledge of Right and Wrong

by Franz Brentano

[43] (p. 28). It is necessary to be on one’s guard against drawing from the principle of love of our neighbour the conclusion that each has to care for every other individual in the same degree as for himself, which, far from conducing towards the universal good, would rather essentially prejudice it. This is seen by reflecting on the circumstance that to ourselves we stand in a position different from that in which we stand to everybody else, while again in respect of these others we are in a position to help, or to injure, one more, the other less. If there are human beings in Mars the inhabitants of the earth can and ought to wish them good also, not however to strive after their good in the same manner as for himself and his fellow-men.

It is in this connexion that the injunction to take thought in the first instance for oneself, a precept to be found in every system of morality, is justifiable: “γνῷθι σαυτόν,” “Sweep before your own doorstep,” etc. The demand to seek first of all the welfare of wife and child, home and fatherland, is also universal. The command: “Take no thought for the morrow,” in the sense in which it really offers wise counsel, also flows as a result from the same source. That my future happiness ought not to be so dear to me as my present happiness is not here implied.

So regarded, the communistic doctrines which illogical impetuosity would seek to derive from the lofty principle of universal brotherhood are shown to be unjustifiable.

[44] (p. 29). The fact that we are often unable to measure the more remote results of our actions offers a more serious difficulty.

But even this thought will not discourage us if we love the universal good. It may be said of all results which are unrecognizable in an exactly equal degree, that one has just as many chances in its favour as the others. According to the law of great numbers a compensation will on the whole result, and so whatever calculable good we create will stand as a plus on the one side and, just as though it stood alone, will justify our choice.

From the same point of view, as I have already suggested in the lecture (p. 22), the doubt is removed which in a similar manner might arise through uncertainty as to whether everything that is good draws from us a love having the qualification of rightness, and whether, therefore, we are able to recognize it as good and to take due account of it.

[45] (p. 29). That in the case of the limits of right (Rechtsgrenzen) we have essentially to do with spheres which lie at the disposal of the individual will has been frequently emphasized both by philosophers (cf. in this respect e.g. Herbart’s Idea of Right) and by able jurists. Ihering in his Geist des römischen Rechts, iii. 1 (p. 320 note), demonstrates this with numerous citations. Arndt e.g. in his Handbuch der Pandekten defines law as “supremacy of the will regarding an object”; for Sintenis it is, “the will of one person raised to the universal will.” Windscheid defines it as “a certain volition (Willensinhalt) of which the legal code in a concrete case affirms that it may be made valid as against every other will.” Puchta, who has perhaps expressed the thought in the most manifold ways, says in his digest of Roman law, section 22, “as the subjects of such a will thought of potentially men are called persons, ... personality is therefore the subjective possibility of the legalized will, of a legal power.” In the same work (section 118, note b) he observes in regard to a want of personality: “The principle of modern law is inability to dispose of property”; many other of his expressions convey the same meaning.

As however these legal authorities have concentrated their attention exclusively upon legal duties, and do not touch upon the problem as to the way in which the individual will has to rule in its legal sphere, Ihering has interpreted them as meaning that they considered the true and highest good, and the most intrinsic and final end, towards which the legal code strives, to be the exercise of the will as will, the joy of the individual in his volitional activity; “the final end of all law is, for them, willing” (pp. 320, 325); “the end of law (according to them) consists once for all in the power of the will, in its supremacy” (p. 326). One can well understand how he comes to condemn a theory so interpreted (p. 327), and even that he succeeds in making it appear ridiculous. “According to this view,” he says, (p. 320) “all private right is nothing less than an arena in which the will moves and exercises itself; the will is the organ by which the individual enjoys his right, the profit obtained from legal right consists in feeling the joy and glory of power, in the satisfaction of having realized an act of will, e.g. of having effected a mortgage, transferred a title, and so proved oneself to be a legal personality. What a poor thing would the will be if the bare and low regions of law were the proper “sphere of its activity!”