Early Ethical Writings of Aurel Kolnai by Dunlop Francis;

Author:Dunlop, Francis;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group

Notes

Counter-gradation occurs when, say, equally ranked emphases of different gradation-series come in contact with one another. So, for example, "discipline" (a lower kind of order) and "enjoyment" (in a morally approved sense). Discipline keeps hedonic values in check and is itself impossible unless pleasure and pain are exploited. Regarding pleasure-values as equal or superior to lower values of order, often a liberating thing to do, has nothing in common with ethical Hedonism. With regard to subjectivist economic value theory see the chapter "Hedonismus und Werttheorie" in B6hm-Bawerk. — An example of counter-gradation, or, better, gradation-back, is also provided by a married woman, who is both fundamentally equal to her husband as spiritual person, hierarchically inferior to him in the next most fundamental sense, but also in many respects in principle superior to him. (Cf. in the religious sphere the Mother of God as holiest human person; in the secular sphere the wife as ruler of the household in spite of and alongside the male dignity of head of the family.)

On value-consistency involving different values: Sympathy with a person goes with love, not necessarily to the same person but to "mankind" in general (Scheler, Symp., A). Conversely, love for a Russian (who possesses national characteristics) means some kind of positive evaluation of Russiandom. In persons we respect we will respect even opinions which would otherwise seem to us not worth the effort of refuting. All loyalty contains response to new values, in accordance with the connections between elements of reality.

On the Technical in conduct: The example of the drowning man was given in conversation by Professor H. Gomperz in Vienna. Regarding the successive, graded, transition of the unfolding of purpose into impulses to action, compare the series: 1. ordo intentionis, 2. choice of means, 3. ordo executionis in Aquinas (in Sertillanges, "Du volontaire").

On the ethical value of Materialism: I deliberately do not say "Naturalism", which conveys too much and too little; too much, in that Naturalism suggests rather the possibility of a happily self-contained extra-moral totality, and too little, in that it lacks the masculine and somehow morally tinged pathos of material inertia, of "the pitiless collisions of matter in Space". Dühring and Czolbe are the most prominent representatives of morally pointed serious Materialism. — That the Material often possesses a kind of "reality-precedence" over the Spiritual, is an extremely important metaphysical case of gradation-back, though cannot be further explicated here. I simply allude provisionally to the materiality of all "existentially important" things, the greater urgency of bodily needs, the importance of this matter-bound earthly life even for the believer in an after-life (earthly life as acquisition of merit), the pathos of "the law of nature" itself, especially for the Christian belief in miracles. The Material has a profound link with clear, ineluctable, decision. (In English "material" can also mean "essential".) — With regard to the Material I repeat here Haessle's excellent formulation, which accurately hits off the nature of qualitative change in gradation: "Ethically speaking the optimum in material goods is the relative maximum" (§3, thomistische Wirtschaftsethik).

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