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The sources of ethics are partly man's own experience and partly the principles and truths proposed by other philosophical disciplines (logic and mataphysics). Ethics takes its origin from the empirical fact that certain general principles and concepts of the moral order are common to all people at all times. All nations distinguish between what is good and what is bad, between good men and bad men, between virtue and vice; they are all agreed in this: that the good is worth striving for and that evil must be shuned, that the one deserves praise, the other, blame. Though in individual cases they may not be one in denominating the same thing good or evil, they are neverthless agreed as to the general principle, that good is to be done and evil avoided. It is a universally recognized principle, that we should not do to others what we would not wish them to do to us. With the aid of the truths laid down in logic and mataphysics, ethics proceeds to give a thorough explanation of this undeniable fact, to trace it back to its ultimate causes, then to gather from fundamental moral principles certain conclusions which will direct man, in the various circumstances and relations of life. Thus the proper method of ethics is at once speculative and empirical; it draws upon experience and metaphysics.
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Supernatural Christian Revelation is not a proper source of ethics. Only those conclusions properly belong to ethics which can be reached with the help of experience and philosophical principles. The Christian philosopher, however, may not ignore supernatural revelation, but must at least recognise it as a negative norm, inasmuch as he is not to advance any assertion in evident contradiction to the revealed truth of Christianity. God is the fountain-head of all truth -- whether natural as made known by Creation, or supernatural as revealed through Christ and the Prophets. As our intellect is an image of the Divine Intellect, so is all certain scientific knowledge the reflex and interpretation of the Creator's thoughts embodied in His creatures, a participation in His eternal wisdom. God cannot reveal supernaturally and command us to believe on His authority anything that contradicts the thoughts expreseed by Him in his creatures, and which, with the aid of the faculty of reason which he has given us, we can discern in His works. To assert the contrary would be to deny God's omniscience and veracity, or to suppose that God was not the source of all truth. A conflict, therefore, between faith and science is impossible, and hence the Christian philosopher has to refrain from advancing any assertion which would be evidently antagonistic to certain revealed truth. Should his researches lead to conclusions out of harmony with faith, he is to take it for granted that some error has crept into his deductions, just as the mathematician whose calculations openly contradict the facts of experience must be satisfied that his demonstration is at fault.
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The philosophical system of Pure Rationalism makes reason the sole source of truth, and therefore at the very outset excludes every reference to Christian Revelation, branding any such reference as degrading and hampering free scientific investigation. The supreme law of science is not freedom, but truth. It is not derogatory to the true dignity and freedom of science to abstain from asserting what, according to Christian Revelation, is manifestly erroneous.
Pure Empiricism, would erect the entire structure of ethics exclusively on the foundation of experience. Experience can tell us merely of present or past phenomena; but as to what, of necessity, and universal, must, or ought to, happen in the future, experience can give us no clue without bringing in the aid of necessary and universal principles. Closely alied to Empiricism is Historicism, which considers history as the exclusive source of ethics. What has been said of Empiricism may also be applied to Historicism. History is concered with what has happened in the past and only too often has to rehearse the moral aberrations of mankind.
Positivism is a variety of Empiricism; it seeks to emancipate ethics from metaphysics and base it on facts alone. No science can be constructed on the mere foundation of facts, and independently of metaphysics. Every science must set out from evident principles, which form the basis of all certain cognition. Ethics especially is impossible without metaphysics, since it is according to the metaphysical view we take of the world that ethics shapes itself. Whoever considers man as nothing else than a more highly developed brute will hold different ethical views from one who discerns in man a creature fashioned to the image and likeness of God, possessing a spiritual, immortal soul and destined to eternal life; whoever refuses to recognize the freedom of the will destroys the very foundation of ethics. Whether man was created by God or possesses a spiritual, immortal soul which is endowed with free will, or is essentially different from brute creation, all these are questions pertaining to metaphysics. Anthropology, moreover, is necessarily presupposed by ethics. No rules can be prescribed for man's actions, unless his nature is clearly understood.
Another untenable system is Traditionalism, which in France, during the last half of the nineteenth century, counted many adherents (among others, de Bonald, Bautain), and which advanced the doctrine that complete certainty in religious and moral questions was not to be attained by the aid of reason alone, but only by the light of revelation as made known to us through tradition. They failed to see that for all reasonable belief certain knowledge of the existence of God and of the fact of revelation is necessarily presupposed, and this knowledge cannot be gathered from revelation. Fideism, or, as Paulsen designated it, the Irrationalism of many Protestants, also denies the ability of reason to furnish certainty in matters relating to God and religion. With Kant, it teaches that reason does not rise above the phenomena of the visible world; faith alone can lead us into the realm of the supersensible and instruct us in matters moral and religious. This faith, however, is not the acceptance of truth on the strength of external authority, but rather consists in certain appreciative judgments, i.e. assumptions or convictions which are the result of each one's own inner experiences, and which have, therefore, for him a precise worth, and corrspond to his own peculier temperament. Since these persuasions are not supposed to come within the range of reason, exception to them cannot be taken on scientific grounds. According to this opinion, religion and morals are relegated to pure subjectivism and lose all their objectivity and universality of value.
Editor: Haselhurst
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1. Catholic Encyclopedia: Ethics, 1908
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