F. H. Bradley

“ Mere thought is not will—that is the inner side only. Mere existence in time and space, or time, is not will—that is the outside only. For will we want both sides, and both sides in one. And from the above we see at once that, if the two sides are to correspond, there must be some correspondence in the nature of what they contain; and, starting here from the side of existence, we may say, you can realize nothing, unless that which you are to realize have in it already the character which distinguishes reality. ”

“ Everybody knows that the only way to do your duty is to do your duties; that general doing good may mean doing no good in particular, and so none at all, but rather perhaps the contrary of good. Everybody knows that the setting out, whether in religion, morals, or politics, with the intent to realize an abstraction, is a futile endeavour; and that what it comes to is that either you do nothing at all, or that the particular content which is necessary for action is added to the abstraction by the chance of circumstances or caprice. ”

“ The particular duties must be taken for granted, as in ordinary morality they are taken for granted. But supposing this done, is duty for duty’s sake a valid formula, in the sense that we are to act always on a law and nothing but a law, and that a law can have no exceptions, in the sense of particular cases where it is overruled? No, this takes for granted that life is so simple that we never have to consider more than one duty at a time: whereas we really have to do with conflicting duties, which as a rule escape conflict simply because it is understood which have to give way. ”

“ But I do not suppose I shall find much contradiction if I say that the predominant character of existence in space and time is, in one word, its particularness, what is ordinarily called its concreteness, the infinitude of its relations. An existing thing and the mere thought of a thing are not the same, if that be taken to mean that there is no difference between them; and, especially in morals, the distance between theory and fact is as immeasurable as the distance between what is thought and what is willed, between a definition and the thing defined. ”

“ The pure will is to be kept pure; it is for its sake that we act, and action consists in the forcing of the sensuous nature. The order is here, ‘Realize the pure will in the sensuous nature,’ and the contradiction is as above. The pure will means the non-sensuous will, and ‘realize it’ means, translate it into an element which destroys its essence. The formal will, when realized, is no longer formal, is materialized, is sensualized, is no longer pure. If you do not want to sensualize the will, why do you say make it real? ”

“ The lower self in morality is not led, nor coaxed, nor consulted, but forced.
Here again we appeal to the moral consciousness to bear testimony to our conclusion. Every moral man knows that to do right is to do one’s duty for its own sake, and that, if duty is done for the sake of some ulterior object, that act may be legal but is certainly not moral. ”

“ All that it comes to is this (and it is, we must remember, a very important truth) , that you must never break a law of duty to please yourself, never for the sake of an end not duty, but only for the sake of a superior and overruling duty. Any breach of duty, as duty, and not as lower duty, is always and absolutely wrong; but it would be rash to say that any one act must be in all cases absolutely and unconditionally immoral. Circumstances decide, because circumstances determine the manner in which the overruling duty must be realized. ”

“ It is not a state or collection of states of the self, as feeling pleasure, to be produced either in me or outside me. To know what it is we must go to the moral consciousness. We find there that the end is for me as active, is a practical end. It is not something merely to be felt, it is something to be done. ”

“ And this formal will is now seen to be the true expression for all the foregoing characteristics, of universality, freedom, and autonomy. In formality we see they are all one. I am autonomous only because I am free, free only because I am universal, universal only because not particular, and not particular only when formal. ”

“ According to ordinary morality (the fact is too palpable to be gainsaid) , it is quite right to speak falsely with intent to deceive under certain circumstances, though ordinary morality might add, ‘I don’t call that a lie.’ It is a lie; and when Kant and others maintained that it must always be wrong to lie, they forgot the rather important fact that in some cases to abstain from acting is acting, is wilful neglect of a duty, and that there are duties above truth-speaking, and many offences against morality which are worse, though they may be less painful, than a lie. ”

“ A more psychological consideration leads us still to the futility of duty for duty’s sake. A will which does not act is no will, and every act is a particular event: an act is this or that act, and an act in general is nonsense. ”

“ It is the universal will. The very notion of the moral end is that it should be an end absolutely, not conditionally. It is not an end for me without being one also for you, or for you and me and not for a third person ”

“ It means that the matter realized, the determination posited by the act, must be self-consistent. Property e.g. is self-consistent. Theft of property is a contradiction.
In the first place, however, is any determination free from contradiction? Take what you will, you must take something definite, and the definite is what it is by the negation of something else. It belongs to the essence of any possible A that it should be not B, C, D, &c., and without this negation it would not be A. A mere positive affirmative is a fictitious abstraction. ”

“ The principle of non-contradiction does not mean Do not contradict yourself; produce a harmony, a system in your acts and yourself; realize yourself as an organic whole. That would be vague enough without further directions; but what our principle here says is not that. It says the act must not contradict itself. ”

“ If I have resolved to kill a man in a certain way, the place, time, &c. are psychically necessary for the particular act of killing, but they may not enter into the essence of the act. (So it is with one’s ordinary duties.) The more specialized and materialized the previous intent, the less is added to it by the particular circumstances; and the less specialized the content, the more is added. If I run out into the street to kill a man, chance [9] decides who it is I kill. So with duty. If I intend to do duty generally, chance decides what duty I do ”

“ To act you must will something, and something definite. To will in general is impossible, and to will in particular is never to will nothing but a form. It must at best be to will a chance case of the form, and then (speaking psychologically) what moves is chance (desire) . The bare form can not move. Will, when one wills nothing in particular, is a pure fiction ”

“ It is a duty for various persons continually to give themselves to certain or well-nigh certain death, and no one has ever called it anything but heroically right and dutiful. Excusable killing is illustrated by the well-known story told in the Indian Mutiny of the husband who killed his wife. ”

“ It is not even aware of a collision in most cases where duties clash; and, where it perceives it, and is confronted with collisions of moral laws, each of which it has been accustomed to look on as an absolute monarch, so to speak, or a commander-in-chief, rather than as a possible subordinate officer, there it does subordinate one to the other, and feels uneasiness only in proportion to the rarity of the necessity, and the consequent jar to the feelings. ”

“ So to kill oneself, in a manner which must be called suicide, may not only be right but heroic; [12] homicide may be excusable, rebellion in the subject and disobedience in the soldier all morally justifiable, and every one of them clear breaches of categorical imperatives, in obedience to a higher law. ”