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VIII

The last major point of agreement between Hegel and Comte which I will mention is no more than a consequence of their historicism. But it has exercised so much independent influence that I must discuss it separately. It is their thorough moral relativism, their conviction either that all moral rules can be recognized as justified by the circumstances of the time, or that only those are valid which can be thus explicitly justified--it is not always clear which they mean. This idea is, of course, merely an application of historical determinism, of the belief that we can adequately explain why people at different times believed what they actually did believe. This pretended insight into the manner in which people's thought is determined implies the claim that we can know what they ought to believe in given circumstances, and the dismissal as irrational or inappropriate of all moral rules which cannot be thus justified.

In this connection historicism shows most clearly its rationalist or intellectualist character:17.50 since the determination of all historical development is to be intelligible, only such forces as can be fully understood by us can have been at work. Comte's attitude on this is really not very different from Hegel's statement that all that is real is rational and all that is rational is also real17.51-- only that instead of rational Comte would have said historically necessary and therefore justified. Everything appears to him as in this sense justified in its time, slavery and cruelty, superstition and intolerance, because--this he does not say but it is implied in his reasoning--there are no moral rules which we must accept as transcending our individual reason, nothing which is a given and unconscious presupposition of all our thought, and by which we must judge moral issues. Indeed, he significantly could not conceive of any other possibility except either a system of morals designed and revealed by a higher being, or one demonstrated by our own reason.17.52 And between these two the necessary superiority of the ``demonstrated morals'' seemed to him unquestionable. Comte was both more consistent and more extreme than Hegel. He had indeed already stated the main conception in his very first publication when, at the age of nineteen, he wrote: ``There is nothing good and nothing bad, absolutely speaking; everything is relative, this is the only absolute statement.''17.53

It is possible, however, that with regard to this particular point I am attributing too much importance to the influence of our two philosophers, and that they were merely following a general fashion of their time which fitted in with their systems of thought. How rapidly moral relativism was then spreading we can see clearly in an interesting exchange of letters between Thomas Carlyle and John Stuart Mill. As early as January 1833 we find Carlyle writing to Mill with reference to a recently published History of the French Revolution :17.54 ``Has not this man Thiers a wonderful system of Ethics in petto? He will prove to you that the power to have done a thing almost (if not altogether) gave you the right to do it: every hero of his turns out to be perfectly justified--he has succeeded in doing.''17.55To which Mill replied: ``You have characterized Thiers' system of ethics most accurately. I am afraid it is too just a specimen of the young French Litterateurs, and that this is all they have made, ethically speaking, of their attempts to imitate the Germans in identifying themselves with the past. By dint of shifting their point of view to make it accord with that of whomever they are affecting to judge, coupled with their historical fatalism, they have arrived at the annihilation of all moral distinctions except success and not success.''17.56 It is interesting that Mill, who knew very well how these ideas had been spread in France by the Saint-Simonians, yet explicitly ascribes their appearance in a young French historian to German influence.

That these views lead both Comte and Hegel to a complete moral and legal positivism 17.57 --and at times desperately close to the doctrine that Might is Right--I can mention only in passing. I believe that quite a good case could be made out that they are among the main sources of the modern tradition of legal positivism. It is, after all, only another manifestation of the same general attitude that refuses to admit anything as relevant which cannot be recognized as the expression of conscious reason.


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