The Origin of the Knowledge of Right and Wrong. By Franz Brentano. English translation by Cecil Hague, Formerly Lector at Prague University, with a Biographical Note. Westminster: Archibald Constable & Co., Ltd.. 1902. Pp. xiv, 125.
This is a far better discussion of the most fundamental principles of
Ethics than any others with which I am acquainted. Brentano himself is fully
conscious that he has made a very great advance in the theory of Ethics. No
one,
he says, has determined the principles of ethics as, on the basis of
new analysis, I have found it necessary to determine them
(p. viii); and his
confidence both in the originality and in the value of his own work is
completely justified. In almost all points in which he differs from any of the
great historical systems, he is in the right; and he differs with regard to the
most fundamental points of Moral Philosophy. Of all previous moralists, Sidgwick alone is in any
resepct superior to him; and Sidgwick was never clearly aware of the wide and
important bearings of his discovery in this respect. Brentano is both clearer
and more profound; and he avoids Sidgwick’s two fundamental errors. It
would be difficult to exaggerate the importance of his work. (¶ 1)
His main proposition is that what we know, when we know that a thing
is good in itself, is that the feeling of love towards that thing (or
pleasure in that thing) is right
(richtig). Similarly, that a thing is bad, is merely another
way of saying that hatred of that thing would be right.
(¶ 2)
The great merit of this view over all except Sidgwick’s is its
recognition that all truths of the form This is good in itself
are
logically independent of any truth about what exists. No ethical proposition of
this form is such that, if a certain thing exists, it is true, whereas, if that
thing does not exist, it is false. All such ethical truths are true,
whatever the nature of the world may be. Hence, in particular, none of
them are either identical with any subjective proposition (e. g. So-and-so has this feeling or desire or
cognition
) or such that, if it be true, any subjective proposition
whatever need be true. Thus Brentano recognizes fully the objectivity
of this fundamental class of ethical judgments. No one,
he says,
[except Herbart] has so radically and completely broken with the subjective
view of ethics
(p. ix). (¶ 3)
Nevertheless Brentano is wrong in supposing that the conception
rightly loved
or worthy of love
is the fundamental ethical concept
which we mean by good in itself.
Sidgwick was right in holding that that
concept is unanalyzable; and it is, in fact, the concept which Brentano denotes
by the word right,
when he says that a thing is good in itself, if the
love of it would be right. Brentano recognizes two very
important concepts when he recognizes both the concept of what it is right to
love and of the rightness which belongs to love of such things; and the
question which of these is properly denoted by the words good in itself might
seem to be merely a verbal question. But it is not a merely verbal question, if,
as Brentano rightly does, we take what is good in itself in the highest possible
degree to be that of which it is our duty to promote the existence. For
whereas the degree in which a thing possesses the quality which he calls
right
must be taken into account in considering what is that greatest
possible good which it is our duty to effect, the degree in which things are
worthy to be loved
is not a measure of our duty to effect their
existence. It is certain that many things, e. g.,
inanimate beautiful objects, possess the quality of being worthy to be loved, in
a higher degree than they possess that of rightness;
it may even be
doubted whether they possess the latter at all. And it is our duty to effect
that which is the most right
possible, not that which is most worthy to
be loved. Though therefore we can agree with Brentano that everything which is
good in itself is worthy to be loved, we cannot agree that everything which is
worthy to be loved is good. (¶ 4)
Brentano makes a similar mistake with regard to the definition of
true
in the sense in which that word is applied to the object of
a belief. He says that, just as an object is good, if it be rightly loved, so it
is true if it be rightly believed. The definition of truth has the same rare
merit as the definition of good, namely, that it is objective. But that
it is false appears to be plain from the fact that we can raise the question
whether it is right
to believe everything that is true: that is
to say, we are immediately aware that true
and rightly believed
are two distinct concepts, one of which, true,
is an unalayzable property
belonging to some objects of belief. But it is important to raise a second
question with regard to this definition of true.
Is the rightness
which Brentano attributes to belief in the true the same quality which
he attributes to love of the good, or is it not? He speaks of right
love
as if it were merely analogous to right
belief (p. 19); and he
suggests that he thinks the rightness
is not the same quality in
the two cases. In that case he is calling two different unanalyzable qualities
by the same name; and that he should not have expressly noticed whether he is
doing so or not, illustrates the insufficient attention which he has given to
the question what he means by rightly loved
—a defect in
his inquiry, which will be illustrated again later, and which will help to
explain his failure to perceive that this quality which he denotes by
rightness,
and not the rightly loved,
is the fundamental
ethical concept properly denoted by good in itself.
In fact, I am unable
to perceive that there is any unalyzable quality which we attribute to belief in
the true except the very one which we attribute to love of what is worthy to be
loved. In other words, Brentano’s judgment that belief in the true is
right
is a judgment that belief in the true is always good in
itself—a proposition which does not seem to be true. If it is not true, it
follows not only that true
does not mean rightly believed,
but
also that just as what it is good to love is not always itself good, so, it is
not always good to believe what is true. The incorrectness of this definition of
true
is further proved by the fact that, as will be shown, the quality
meant by rightness
has degrees, whereas, as Brentano himself rightly
maintains, no one thing is more true than another (p. 23). (¶ 5)
Another doctrine of Brentano’s also illustrates the
insufficient attention which he has paid to the nature of that rightness
the reference to which constitutes the merit of his definitions of good and
true. His belief in this doctrine seems indeed to be the main cause why he has
given so little attention to the nature of this fundamental concept. It is the
doctrine which explains why he has given to this inquiry the unfortunate title
of an inquiry into The Origin of the Knowledge of Right and
Wrong.
Brentano holds, namely, that (as Hume taught) all our conceptions are
derived from concrete impressions
—impressions, which, he says, are
either of physical
or of psychical content
(p. 12). This doctrine
may be perfectly true in one sense; but in the sense naturally conveyed by the
words it includes a most important error. Obviously the conception of
good,
as Brentano defines it, cannot be derived merely from the
experience of loving, but only from that of right
loving
—from the perception of the rightness of a love: its
origin cannot be merely the perception of a love which is
right, but in which this quality is not perceived, it can only be a perception
in which it is itself contained. But whereas the experience of loving
has all the marks which are suggested by calling it a concrete
impression of psychical content,
the experience of right
loving
—i. e., the perception of the
rightness of a love—has not. The quality of
rightness
is not a psychical content and the perception of it is
not an impression in the ordinary sense of these words. A single mark
is sufficient to distinguish it: by a psychical content
we always mean at
least an existent, and by impression
the cognition of an
existent, and rightness
is not an existent. Brentano is certainly
not sufficiently attentive to this distinction between the experience of loving
and the experience of right loving. He says he belongs to the empirical
school
(p. 8); and he here shows himself to be under the influence of
empiricism, in a sense in which empiricism is certainly erroneous. (¶ 6)
The same inattention to the nature of the quality which he means by
rightness
is further shown in the account Brentano gives of our knowledge
that one thing is better than another. His first suggestion is that
since good
means worthy to be loved,
better
must mean worthy of more love
(p. 21). It
does not seem to have occurred to him that it must mean more worthy
of love,
that is to say, his attention is directed only to that element of
his definition, which is a concrete psychical content,
namely the love,
not to the more important element rightness,
which is not. In
asserting that a thing is rightly loved with a greater love, you do not
assert that it possesses the quality of being rightly loved in any
higher degree than what is rightly loved with a less love; and hence if good
means rightly loved, you do not assert that it is better. In short, even on
Brentano’s definition, if anything is to be better than another,
that can only be because the quality which he means by rightness
has degrees—a point which he has entirely failed to observe, and which
proves that true
cannot mean rightly believed.
The supposition
that, if good
means worthy of love,
better
means worthy
of more love,
does in fact derive most of its plausibility from an ambiguity
in the latter expression, in virtue of which it denotes not merely that a
greater and a less love are each of them right,
but that each of them is
more right
than some other love. If we say that one thing is
worthy of more love than another, these words naturally convey the meanings that
to love these things with the different amounts of love in question is
more right
than to love them both with the same amount: we do
not merely convey the assurance that to love each with equal amounts of love in
question is right,
in a sense in which this assurance does not exclude
the supposition that to love either of them with any other amount would also be
equally right.
And that Brentano is actually using the expression
worthy of more love,
in the sense in which to say that one thing is
worthy of more love than another is to say that one love is more right than
another, is shown by the reason he gives for denying that the better is worthy
of more love (for, after all, he does deny it). His reason is (p. 22) that
nothing which is really good can be loved too much. And this proposition
obviously only implies that no one thing is worthy of less love than another,
because it asserts that a greater love of a thing is in no case less
right than a less love of the same thing. Accordingly, whether this
proposition is true or false (and it seems to be false), it makes an assertion
not only about degrees of love, but also about degrees of rightness. (¶ 7)
But Brentano, we have said, rejects the view that better
means
worthy of more love,
except, he says, in quite another sense
(p.
22). This other sense
is that better
means object of a
right preference.
But what is meant by a right preference?
If, as usual, we mean by preference
a feeling, it is obviously a
feeling only towards the thing preferred, not towards the
thing which is not preferred. When we say that we prefer one thing to another we
usually mean either (1) that we like the one more than we like
the other, or (2) that we choose the one and do not choose the other:
there is no such thing as a single feeling, called preference,
directed
to both the things. But in case (1) to know that a thing is
rightly
preferred, is only to know that it is worthy of the greater love
which it receives, not that the other thing is only worthy of
less; and in case (2) to know that it is rightly
chosen is again only to
know that this choice is positively right,
not that the other
choice is not also and equally right:
in neither case does the
rightness
of the preference allow any inference as to the relative value
of what is not preferred. Such an inference is only possible, if by saying that
the preference is right,
we mean that the liking or choice of the thing
preferred is more right
than the alternative? (¶ 8)
The above seems to be the most important points in Brentano’s
theory concerning the nature of intrinsic value and intrinsic superiority. As
regards intrinsic value, his theory has the almost unique merit that it defines
good in itself,
not only as an objective concept, but as
containing that very concept which is in fact properly denoted by the words: but
it is defective in that the complex property which he takes to be the required
definition is not merely different from the simple property which is the true
definition, but hasn ot even the same extension; worthiness to be loved
is not even a correct criterion of intrinsic value. As regards intrinsic
superiority his theory has an additional defect: he does not clearly
recognize that to know one thing to be better than another must be to
know that it has in a higher degree the very property which we mean by good
in itself.
(¶ 9)
If now we pass to his views on the question, What things are good
in themselves, and in what degrees?
we find that they have corresponding
merits and defects. He cannot be too highly praised for insisting that, not one
thing only, but very many different things have intrinsic value; and, in
particular, for emphasizing the value of the immense variety of different states
which belong to the class enjoyment of things worthy to be enjoyed
or
right loves.
These constitute, in fact, by far the greatest part of
considerable goods: and Brentano does recognize that they are all good, and
that, if they are so, mere pleasure or mere knowledge cannot be the sole goods.
But his views have the serious defect that he ascribes value to two classes of
things which have little or no value—to things which are, in both cases,
necessary constituents of valuable wholes, but which seem nevertheless to have
no value in themselves. The first class consists of things which his definition
of good
binds him to consider good—things which are really worthy
of love: it is certainly good to love all such things, but only
some of them are also good themselves; as an example of those
which are not, I have already mentioned inanimate beautiful objects. As examples
of the second class of things to which he certainly ascribes more value than
they possess, we may take pleasure and knowledge. This error
is even more grave than the last, since it compels him to ascribe value to
things which are not merely indifferent but positively bad; and it follows not
from his definition of good
but from a principle which I have not yet
mentioned. This principle is that no one thing is better than another, unless it
contains a greater number of good or a less number of bad parts. In this book,
indeed, Brentano is even inclined to maintain that all judgments of intrinsic
superiority are purely analytic—that better
merely
means having a greater number of good parts.
But the translator
tells us, in the Appendix, that he has now definitely abandoned this view: he
now recognizes that it is by no means evident from analysis that one good
plus another is preferable to each of these goods taken singly
(p. 122,
note). We are not told, however, that Brentano has also abandoned the views with
which we are now concerned—the views that, as a matter of fact,
not only are two good things always better than one of them, but also that no
one thing is better than another unless it contains more good parts.
From the second of these principles it would follow that all good things, which
are not composed of good parts, are equally good; and also that any
quantity of pleasure is one such good thing. For it is certainly true that a
greater pleasure in a very beautiful thing is sometimes better than a less
pleasure in the same; and, this being so, it follows from Brentano’s
principle, that what differentiates the former from the latter—namely the
excess of pleasure—is good in itself. And similarly it is certain that one
state may be better than another, where it only differs from that other in
containing more knowledge; and hence it would also follow that some
knowledge, at all events, was good in itself. But the principle from which these
results follow is certainly false: that it is an error, and a grave one, may be
shown by taking a case in which it would prove to be good what is in fact
positively bad in a high degree. For Brentano is bound to hold that a very great
pleasure in what is wholly bad, but not very bad, is not merely better
than less pleasure in the same, but positively good. He must even, if the bad
thing be purely imaginary, pronounce it to be better than a less
pleasure in an imaginary thing which is wholly good. In fact, however, a great
pleasure in what is bad seems certainly to be both a great positive
evil and worse than a less pleasure in the same. It follows that one
thing may be better or worse than another, even though it does not contain more
good or bad parts respectively; and hence that the facts admitted above give us
no reason for pronouncing either pleasure or knowledge to be good in themselves.
It does not follow, indeed, that pleasure is not good in
itself; only, if it is good, we must also dispute the principle that two good
things are always better than one of them—must deny, at least, that the
value of the whole formed by them is always equal to the sum of the values of
its parts. (¶ 10)
The third great excellence in Brentano’s Ethics is his clear
recognition of the distinction between what is merely a means to good
and what is good in itself, and of the fact that the one supreme rule of
Practical Ethics is that we ought always to do that which will
cause the whole state of the Universe to have as much intrinsic value
as possible—that for an action to be right
in the ordinary sense of
the word, it is both sufficient and necessary that it should be a means
to this result. He states the consequences of this principle very clearly in
several points in which they are frequently overlooked. In particular, the text
of the book, which consists of a lecture delivered before the Vienna Law Society
in 1889, under the title The Natural Sanction for Law and Morality,
is
arranged with a view to showing, as against the relativistic views of Ihering,
that, although there is no natural law,
in the sense of laws of which the
knowledge is either innate
or universal, the above principle is
a natural moral law
in the sense that it is universally
valid; and that all positive laws have natural sanction
or are
truly binding, if, and only if, their observance does have the best
possible results. (¶ 11)
The book consists of this lecture, together with a number of notes,
of much greater bulk than the text, and two Appendices, one of a review of
Miklovich on Subjectless Propositions,
which first appeared as a
feuilleton in the Vienna Evening Post, and the other a brief
account, by the translator, of Brentano’s life and philosophical
achievements. The longest note, which consists of a criticism on Sigwart’s
theory of judgment, is, like hte Appendix on Miklovich and some other long
notes, relevant to the subject of the lecture only in that it serves to confirm
Brentano’s theory of judgment and the analogy between belief in the true
and love of the good. Many notes, again, are directly historical. Nevertheless,
owing to Brentano’s extraordinary clearness with regard to the precise
relevance of all he says, the contents of the book are far more easy to grasp
than is usual with books of the most regular form: there seems to be no reason
to wish that he had arranged his matter differently. (¶ 12)
The translation is not well done; and it should be noted that the cross-references are often utterly wrong, e. g., on p. 47, where we are referred to note 27, p. 83 sub., the reference should apparently be to p. 73 sub.; on p. 82, for note 26, p. 77 read p. 71; on p. 87, for note 43, p. 99 read note 44, p. 92; on p. 89, for note 31, p. 91 read note 32, p. 85; and in the notes (pp. 87-90), the notes numbered 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42 should be numbered respectively 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43. (¶ 13)
G. E. Moore.
Trinity College, Cambridge.