A Study On Dilthey’s Formative Ethics

This dissertation takes Dilthey’s three major ethical works,Critique of Schleiermacher’s Principles of Ethics,Attempt at an Analysis of Moral Consciousness and A System of Ethics,as the core,and has systematically reviewed and interpreted his formative ethics,elucidating the importance of the foundations of ethical thought to the project of “Critique of Historical Reason” or the System of Human Sciences and strengthening the grasp of his philosophical thought in its totality and coherence.The concern for ethical issues has continued throughout Dilthey’s philosophical career and has truly reflected and profoundly influenced the development and changes of his thought.In his early period,he established an ethical position that opposed Kant’s formalistic ethics,advocated thinking about the individual’s connection with others,society and the state within the vivid and complete life frame of human beings,and strove to understand the social and historical nature of them.As a result,the inquiry into the relationship between moral norms and ethical practices has gradually changed into an exploration of the “immanent purposiveness” of individuals and the socio-historical world based on structural psychology.In order to ensure the guiding role of ethics for ethical practices and its reformative impact on life,Dilthey proposes the three “synthetic a priori moral judges” of “uprightness”,“benevolence” and “perfection” or “practical ways of acting in which the moral will is able to interact with the world of values” from the “moral nature of the acting mind” as the basis for the unity of moral consciousness is in order to overcome the Kantian dichotomy between “is” and “ought”.This also makes it possible to rethink the contradiction between the unconditionality and variability of the moral law from the perspective of “Gesinnung” and the moral organization of human beings.In contrast,Dilthey’s formative ethics in his middle and late period has a distinctly character of “social ethics”,which also reflects a closer connection with the sociohistorical development of his time.He advocates the understanding of the roots of moral phenomena in the living life experiences of human beings and their coherences,and returns from the exploration of the subjective capacity of human beings to the investigation of the original ethical process of living beings and their life coherence.After elucidating the basic structure of psychic life and the “ethical predispositions” of the individual,Dilthey continues to follow his “psycho-ethical approach that is rooted in anthropological-historical analysis” and discusses the inner logic of “ethical evolution”.In his view,all social ethical forces arise from the instincts and “ethical predispositions”of individuals in social associations.The tendency of their development toward “enduring satisfaction”,which they show together,is in fact the result of the interaction of various interrelated individual wills in society.Therefore,although he ultimately leaves room for a priori moral norms,this does not negate the strong practical orientation of his ethical theory and the important value of guiding ethical practices.