Abstract
In this chapter we will explore the most interesting period in the development of ethics—the appearance of the idea of science and the following construction of a new type of knowledge based only on rational argumentation. We will explore how the creators of the new human knowledge understood the methodological status of ethics and will see that surprisingly many of them believed in the possibility of building a scientific variant of ethics. Other philosophers took opposite positions and claimed that scientific ethics was impossible. Later this skepticism had a strong influence on further development of moral philosophy and other social sciences.
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Notes
- 1.
Bacon divided all sciences into Natural Philosophy and Human Philosophy. The latter was divided into Philosophy of Humanity which studies a man as such and Civil Philosophy which studies interaction of people in society. Philosophy of Humanity is divided into study of body and study of soul, and the study of soul was divided into two parts: logic which studies cognitive reasoning and ethics which studies will, the appetites, and affections. Ethics also consisted from two parts: “exemplar of platform of good” which should establish an ideal of good and “the regiment or culture of the mind” which should bring the person to the discovered ideal.
- 2.
Descartes’ Method was published in 1637, Hobbes’ Leviathan in 1651. During his long stay in Paris, Hobbes enjoyed the intellectual company of skeptics (Maren Mersenne, Pierre Gassendi, and others), and therefore breathed the same intellectual atmosphere as Descartes (Herbert 2011, p. x). We know that Hobbes wrote a review on one of Descartes’ books, and Descartes once said that Hobbes’ “ability in morals was far greater than in metaphysics and physics.” (Robertson 1886, p. 58). Leo Strauss suggested that Hobbes borrowed his understanding of passions from Descartes’ The Passions of the Soul (1649) (Strauss 1936).
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Storchevoy, M. (2018). Normative Ethics Before the Twentieth Century. In: A Scientific Approach to Ethics. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69113-8_4
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