THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
fluence of English deism and French materialism. The representatives of this movement included J. P. Miller, Gottfried Less, and K. F. Bahrdt. J. D. Michaelis followed a similar course in his Moral (3 parts, Gottingen, 1792-1802), while F V Reinhard defended a rationalistic supernaturalism in his System der christlichen Moral (5 vols., Sulzbach, 1788-1815).
A new trend in the history of ethics was introduced by Immanuel Kant, among whose works bearing upon this subject special 6. Kant's mention may be made of the Grund- School. legung zur Metaphysik der Sitten (Riga, 1785), Kritik der praktischen Vernunft (1788), and M etaphysische Anfangsgriinde der Tugendlehre (Konigsberg, 1797). Through Kant's energetic emphasis on the unconditional necessity of the moral law, which transcended all empiricism, the dominant eudembnism was refuted, and a deeper knowledge of evil became possible than had been within the capabilities of the ethics of the Enlightenment. Kant was also in the right in his view of the autonomy of the moral law as opposed to external interpretations of moral authority, even though they be based upon the Bible; but the harshness with which he defended his attitude destroyed the proper dependence of ethics on religion and resulted in a legalistic rigorism. Despite such faults, Kant's basal ethical views were widely accepted in the theology of his period, not only by rationalistic ethicists, but also by such supernaturalists as K. F. Staudlin and J. H. Tief trunk; although some, like J. F. Flatt of Tubingen, modified them. Through anthropological investigations, F. H. Jacobi and J. F. Fries endeavored further to develop the Kantian ethics, and they were followed by De Wette, Baumgarten-Crusius, and L. A. Kahler. A distinct step in advance of Kant was marked by J. G. Fichte's Sittenlehre (Jena, 1798), especially in its demand for a desire of the good, and through its establishment of ethics upon the belief in the moral governance of the world. Still stronger was the reaction against the subjectivity of the period of the Enlightenment in favor of a recognition of objectivity in the ethics of Schelling and Hegel. The former, in his System des transcendentalen Idealismus (Tubingen, 1800) and his Untersuehungen iiber das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit (1809), laid down the principle: "Become a being, and cease to be merely a phenomenon." He failed, however, to distinguish the ethical domain from the province of law, and thus ascribed too much importance to the State. Still more one-sided was the view of Hegel, expressed in his Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts (Berlin, 1833), since he discovered ethics, as the realization of the rational processes of the world in general, preeminently in the ordinances of natural human society, but left the Church no secure position. In opposition to such metaphysical bases of ethics, Herbart, in his Allgemeine praktische Philosophie (Gottingen, 1808) and Analytische Beleuchtung des Naturrechts und der Moral (1836), sought to establish the science solely on the facts of experience. According to him, ethics,
as a division of esthetics, is to posit the simplest relations which, as being morally beautiful, evoke pleasure, but whose sources are not to be investigated. Herein Herbart doubtless intended to recognize both the unconditionality and the unity of the ethical, but the former quality was threatened by his fundamentally esthetic point of view, and the latter by the division into individual concepts of relation.
In consideration of these defects of philosophical
ethics, it was the more momentous that theological
ethics won its independent impor-
7. Schleier- tance. The most powerful incentive
macher. to this development was given by Friedrich Schleiermacher, who, in his Monologen (Berlin, 1800), emphasized the significance of individuality, and in his Grundlinien einer Kritik der bisherigen Sittenlehre (1803) laid stress on the concept of moral good. Beginning with 1819, he published a series of treatises of ethical content, while after his death his philosophical ethics was edited on the basis of his lectures (Berlin, 1835), followed by his Christliche Sitte (1843). Although the first-named is divided into the theory of the good, the theory of virtue, and the theory of duty, it discusses only the first part in detail. Here Schleiermacher, influenced by Spinoza and Schelling, considers the good as a union of nature and reason; while the corresponding acts are either organizing (employing nature as a tool) or symbolizing (transforming all into a symbol of reason). This antithesis, however, is crossed by the classification of all activity into general and individual, so that both activity and the resultant good become fourfold. The theological ethics of Schleiermacher is distinguished from his philosophical system especially by the fact that it is based not on reason, but on the Christian consciousness, since it seeks to describe activity arising from the domination of such consciousness, and also explicitly considers sin. This attempt, carried out with masterly skill, to permeate the entire sphere of human activity with the principles of Christian ethics has exerted an influence far and wide. Among more recent theological ethicists, Schleiermacher has been very closely followed by K. A. Riitenick in his Sittenlehre (Berlin, 1832), which forms the second part of his Christliche Lehre fiLr Konfirmanden. The influence of Schleiermacher and Hegel is likewise manifest, despite the supernaturalistic spirit of the work, in the admirable Theologische Ethik of R. Rot he (3 vols., Wittenberg, 1845-48), which seeks to transform material nature into a spiritual personality from the point of view of Christian conscience.
An attitude closely akin to the mediating theology is represented by H. Martensen, in his Christelige Ethik (3 vols., Copenhagen, 1871- .8. Recent 1878), I. A. Dorner, in his System der
Manuals, christlichen Sittenlehre (Berlin, 1885), and J. Kostlin, in his Christliche Ethik (Berlin, 1899). A more conservative and Biblical position appears in C. F Schmid's Christliche Sittenlehre (Stuttgart, 1861), C. Palmer's Moral des Christentums (Stuttgart, 1864), J. T. Beck's Vorlesungen iiber christliche Ethik (3 vols., Giitersloh, 1882-83), the third (ethical) part of M.