Moral Phenomena - Volume 1 by Nicolai Hartmann

Author:Nicolai Hartmann
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: -
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Published: 2017-06-21T16:00:00+00:00

(c) FORMALISM AND APRIORISM

The definitive view is this: The two contrasted pairs “formal-material” and “a priori-a posteriori” have nothing to do with each other.2 Not everything aprioristic is formal, nor is everything material aposterioristic. The aprioristic is indeed always universally valid, the aposterioristic is not. But universality as such is not something formal. Within the aprioristic—for example, within the system of geometry—there are laws of greater or less range of validity. And the more general, as compared with the more special, are always formal. The more special in comparison are material. This only means that the more special always has the greater richness of content. But all propositions here are in the same way “aprioristic,” without distinction as to the richness of content and the range of universality.

Hence for ethics it follows: A principle, like the moral law, or a commandment in general, even a standard, can very well have “matter,” without any prejudice to its apriority. A “materially determined will” does not need, as Kant thought, to be determined empirically. The impulsion which sets it in motion need not be from without. Material determination is not naturalistic determination. It does not necessarily spring from general existential laws, it does not imply any causal dependency. It does not degrade the human will into a “natural entity.” For its origin can be perfectly autonomous, its objectivity purely aprioristic.

What was valuable in the Kantian doctrine, the rejection of ethical empiricism and heteronomy, the discarding of casuistry and of the prescription of special ends, the claim of strict universality of principle and its validity, not as an end but as the standard for the will in relation to its moral quality—all this can be completely retained and carried out without accepting the “formal” character of the principle. If the matter of the principle itself is purely aprioristic, if it does not emanate from goods which are given and desired or from the concrete tendency of a natural instinct, the entire series of requirements is no less fulfilled in it than if its principle were of a purely formal character. In other words, the distinction between form and matter has no bearing upon an autonomous ethical principle. It is only a question of apriority.

In positive terms: Values may be as formal or material as they please, only they must be something self-dependent, they must be independent of all extraneous principles, and the valuational consciousness in regard to them must be aprioristic. If by the aprioristic we do not understand a function, but only the specific way of knowing something objective which, as such, can be as well understood as mistaken, there is no sort of difficulty in regard to the material content of values. In the problem of the apriorical it is subjectivism which favours ethical formalism. If we remove the subjectivism, the formalism loses its underpinning.

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