Ethics: Origin and Development - Peter Kropotkin

punishment in the life to come; reasoning; rash impulse, etc. And Feuerbach could offer no new or satisfactory answer to these questions.

Jodl, who takes so sympathetic an attitude toward Feuerbach, points out that "there is obviously a gap in Feuerbach's exposition. He fails to show that the contraposition between me and thee is not a contraposition between two persons, but between the individual and society," 20 But even this remark still leaves the questions unanswered and they remain in all their force.

This omission, continues Jodl, was made good by Knapp's "System of the Philosophy of Law." Knapp definitely represented the interests of the clan as the logical starting point in the moral process.21 And the rational value of morality increases in proportion as man identifies himself and his interests with an ever larger group of people, and finally with humanity as a whole. Knapp thus returned to the instinct of sociality, which was already understood by Bacon as a stronger and a more permanently active instinct than that of personal gratification.

Those who wish to gain a closer acquaintance with Feuerbach's ethics are referred to his easily readable works, based on observation of life and not on abstract assumptions, and full of valuable thoughts. Jodl's excellent exposition may be also recommended. I shall merely refer, by way of conclusion, to Feuerbach's explanation of the distinction between tendencies (egoistic as well as social) and duty, and to the significance of this distinction in ethics. The fact that native propensity and the sense of duty often contradict each other does not mean that they are inevitably antagonistic and must so remain. On the contrary, all moral education strives to eliminate this contradiction, and even when a man risks his life for the sake of what he considers his duty, he feels that though action may lead to self-annihilation -- inaction will unquestionably be a moralannihilation. But here we are already leaving the realm of simple justice and are entering into the region of the third member of the moral trilogy, and of that I shall speak later. I will simply note one of Feuerbacvh's definitions which approaches very closely the conception of justice: "Moral will is a will that does not wish to inflict evil, because it does not wish to suffer evil."

The fundamental problem of Feuerbach's philosophy is the establishment of a proper attitude of philosophy towards religion. His negative attitude towards religion is well known. But while endeavouring to free humanity from the domination of religion, Feuerbach, like Comte, did not lose sight of the causes of its origin and its influence on the history of mankind, --- the influence which should under no circumstances be forgotten by those who, assuming a scientific attitude, wage a battle against religion and superstition embodied in the Church