Chapter III: Critique of the Negations of the Economic Form

[Sidenote: _The thesis of moral abstracticism against the concept of the useful._]

If in the course of philosophical history, the theory of utility has sought to cause the disappearance of the other practical term, which is morality, by swallowing it up, we are not to believe that morality has been for its part more modest and discreet and has not in its turn attempted to devour its companion. One exaggeration has been met with another; to utilitarianism has been opposed that error which may be called _moral abstracticism,_ by means of which is refused to the concept of utility the place that belongs to it in the organism of the spirit.

Such a refusal (analogous to our analysis of the utilitarian theory) cannot take place, save in three ways: that is, in so far as value is denied to the useful, either as _practical_ concept, or as _positive_ concept, or as _philosophical_ concept. Here too we naturally do not take count of the theses of the materialists or of the intellectualists, which (especially those of the former) have raged in the field of Economy not less than in that of Ethic, giving rise to insane attempts to explain the useful on mechanical principles, or with the contingencies of historical evolution.

[Sidenote: _The useful as the means or as theoretical fact._]

The useful (it has been said) is nothing but the _means_ to obtain a certain end. For example, if I take a walk every day with a view to keeping myself in good health, the daily walk is the suitable means and is therefore useful; if, on the contrary, I find that it makes me ill, this means that it is not the suitable means and it would be, and I should declare it to be, useless or harmful. Now by the demonstration given above, it is known that means and end are indistinguishable in the _practical,_ for what is called means is nothing but the actual situation (and the knowledge of it), from which arises the practical act, and to which that act corresponds. Thus it is most possible to separate the means from the end; but in so doing, the consideration of the practical act is abandoned, and we pass to that of its theoretical antecedent; and if the mere theoretical antecedent be called "useful" or "practical" in ordinary speech (remembering the practical act, to which it has been or it is presumed that it may be united) then a metaphor is employed, against which there is nothing to be said. Those, then, who define the useful as the means should once for all realize that with such a definition they remove that concept from the circle of the Philosophy of the practical and transport it into Logic, where the relation of means and end is the very same as that of cause and effect, and it again becomes part of the theory of empirical concepts, in which cause and effect are wont to be posited as terms separately conceivable. This has been more or less consciously recognized, when the useful has been defined as the _technical,_ for we know that the technical is nothing but knowledge thus made into a metaphor, owing to the relation that it has or is presumed to be capable of having, with an action that has been done or is about to be done.

[Sidenote: _Technical and hypothetical imperatives._]

The theoretical character of the technical has, on the contrary, been obscured, when technical knowledge has received the name of _hypothetical imperatives,_ distinct and ranged beside the _categorical._ The imperative is will, and is therefore always both categoric and imperative: _a_ is willed (categorically), but _a_ would not be willed if the condition of fact and situation _b_ did not exist (hypothetically). The merely hypothetical imperative is the knowledge, that remains when abstraction is made of the practical act or of the will; and is no longer an imperative, but a theoretic affirmation. Where effective will is not, imperatives cannot be talked of.

[Sidenote: _Critique: the useful is a practical fact._]

Having made clear that the definition of the useful as _means_ implies the negation of the useful as a practical fact and its reduction to a theoretical category already known, we must exclude the possibility of such a reduction, for in the useful, the practical character, the effectivity of the will, is ineliminable. "It is useful for me to take a walk" means, "It pleases me to take a walk," "I will to do it." It is a question, not of contemplation or of reasoning, but of volitional movement. The knowledge that precedes the utilitarian act is one thing, the act itself is another. The old man has the same knowledge as the young man, he has indeed much more (_si jeunesse savait, si vieillesse pouvait!_), but he does not will what the young man wills: he knows that by traversing so many kilometers he will arrive at a certain definite point; but it is not useful for him to go there, because it is not useful for him to traverse those kilometers, or to submit to that exertion at the risk of an illness. The utilitarian will is expressed, not in merely hypothetical imperatives, but in those categoric imperatives that are at the same time hypothetical. The general formula is "will!" or "will that you will!" or "be coherent in your willing!" as the individuated forms are those that we are continually repeating to ourselves, "now, to bed!" "now, up you get!" and the like; which, when developed, mean: "go to bed" (if you wish to rest yourself), "get up" (if you wish to work), and so on. The distinction between the cognoscitive and the volitional theses is here evident.

[Sidenote: _The useful as the egoistic or immoral._]

Since then, owing to the unalterably practical character of the utilitarian fact, it was not possible to insist upon its reduction to the technical, and since, on the other hand, it was not desired to recognize it as a practical category side by side with the practical category of morality, they have tried to think of it as something certainly practical, but at the same time of little value, to beware of it, to combat it, to free ourselves from it. "Useful" has in this way become synonymous with wilfulness, with individual caprice, with will more or less perverted, and (looking upon immorality as the individual I, shut up in itself and rebelling against the universal) with _egoism._ This theory is supported by certain common modes of speech, in which the moral man is opposed to the man intent upon what is useful to him as an individual, the ethical to the economic life. But it is a question of phrases, true,' perhaps, in a certain sense, but inexact when understood or interpreted as affirmations of a contest between morality and utility.

[Sidenote: _Critique: the useful is amoral._]

We discover at once that the contest is inexistent, by merely thinking of the case already mentioned, of the man in whom the moral conscience is not developed or has been suppressed, or of the case--limit called _innocence._ What is done in innocence responds, no doubt, to individual pleasure, and so to what is useful for the individual, as he feels it in the given circumstances: were this not so, what is done would not be done. But innocence is not immoral on this account. It will be _amoral,_ because it is merely individual volition deprived of the light of the eternal; it will never be _immoral._ Thus (to make use of the comparison and analogy of the theoretic activity) the images that the poet creates will be without philosophy, but will not for this reason be anti-philosophical. Because, were that so, they would have to be partially philosophical, that is to say, to enter into strife with philosophy; but there is no such strife, and, therefore, those images, although philosophically not true, are none the less not philosophically false. Yet they are theoretical acts, in the same way that philosophy is a theoretical act. The philosophical innocence of the poet does not change his intuitive knowledge into bad philosophical knowledge, into a negative of philosophy.--Further, the useful not only is not the negative of morality, but, as we know, is also a fact that unites itself very well with morality, as the word is joined to the thought, making it concrete and palpable, so much so that thought without words is impossible. What honourable man would tolerate being judged disuseful? What moral action would be truly moral, were it not at the same time useful? The good action is good, because it is not bad, that is, it absolutely excludes the bad at the point in which it becomes effective; but certainly it is not so, because disuseful; indeed, in being good, it is also useful, because it absolutely comprehends the useful in itself at the point in which it becomes effective. The union of morality with utility suffices to eliminate the concept of the useful as a negative. Certainly negative and positive do unite to give rise to becoming and to development; but their union is that of strife, not of concord.

[Sidenote: _The useful as ethical minimum._]

The third way of eliminating the concept of the useful from Philosophy, or from the Philosophy of the practical, is that which makes of it a concept of ethical description, or an empirical and psychological concept designating certain groups of very minute ethical facts, the rudimentary ethical consciousness. Hence the illusion of the existence of volitional acts indifferent in respect to morality. These acts are really indifferentiated for the mind that is examining them, which sometimes does not take the trouble to do so minutely, save when such an examination is seriously undertaken, and then they are always differentiated into good or bad. Thus it generally said that eating and sleeping, playing at cards or at billiards, are things that appertain, not to morality, but to individual utility, and that each one may conduct himself as he wills in respect to them, whereas individual choice is excluded when it is necessary to fulfil one's own obligations of social work or of respecting the life of one's neighbour. But if we observe attentively, we see that also in eating or in sleeping, in playing cards or billiards, one acts morally or immorally, since, for example, it is immoral to ruin one's health with eating too much, or with sleeping too little, or to corrupt soul and intellect with card-playing and dawdling in billiard-rooms, when one can do something better.

[Sidenote: _Critique: the useful is premoral._]

But the useful is none of all these things; it is not the complex of ethical micro-organisms, in which we discover with the microscope the same facts of life and of death that we observe with the naked eye in macro-organisms. No microscope will ever discern in it the oppositions of moral good and evil, because these oppositions are not really there; there are only those of utilitarian or economic good and evil. For the useful is not the moral minimum, but the _premoral._ In this case it is a question, not of approximative, but of rigorous difference; not psychological, but philosophical.

[Sidenote: _A desperate attempt: the useful as inferior practical conscience. Confirmation of the autonomy of the useful._]

Finally, it is necessary to consider the attempt to present the utilitarian conscience as a moral conscience, _different and inferior_ to another moral conscience placed over it, not as a new mode of eliminating the concept of the useful, by absorbing it in that of morality, but as a confession of the autonomy of that moment of the spirit. It would be moral, because there is no contradiction to be found in it that can cause it to be judged immoral, and if it be so judged, this happens because it is looked at from the point of view of the superior conscience, or because the superior conscience is erroneously transported into the inferior. But this has importance precisely because it is not moral, and because the value that it is admitted to possess, far from being morality, is spirituality; that is to say, it constitutes a peculiar spiritual value, different from morality. "Better a will of some sort than no will at all" is a common saying which means that prior to morality, there is another and more elementary spiritual demand. The distinction of the two consciences, then, is philosophical, not one of more or less, a distinction of degrees, but not of empirical degrees, which coincides with our conclusion. Thus, to return to the usual comparison, the poetical figuration is true, and can only be judged false by him who looks upon it from a philosophical point of view, or himself falsifies it by turning it into a bad philosopheme. But the truth of that figuration is not philosophical, and remains purely and simply poetical truth. It will be said that morality is implied in utilitarian volition, because, when the individually useful is posited, the universal, which will dominate and correct it, is promoted, in the same way as it has been said that philosophy is implied in the æsthetic intuition, since by positing the individual imagination is posited the claim of the universal, which surpasses and renders it untrue. But since the æsthetic conscience is distinguished from the philosophical, precisely because that which in the latter is _explicit_ is only _implicit_ in the former, so, in like manner, the utilitarian conscience is distinguished from the moral conscience, because that morality which becomes explicit and effective in the second, is only implicit or actually inexistent in the first. The difference between _implicit_ and _explicit_ is another way of enunciating the distinction between the two consciousnesses or practical forms, the autonomy of both being thus recognized.