Introduction

1 The object of the doctrine of virtue is not directly the totality of reason as against the totality of nature, but reason in the human individual.

2 On the one hand, then, [it is] everything that is posited in the highest good, because reason cannot be present in any other way; on the other hand, however, it excludes everything that is a product; that is, not only formed external nature, but also the organism as something that has been formed; for it features here only as agent.

3 In passing, then: what about the difference between virtue and talent? From the point of view of the highest good, we would say: so much virtue equals so much talent, and vice versa. Not from the point of view of the doctrine of virtue, however. For the virtue of the one has a share in the talent of the Other, i.e. of the morally formed individual.

4 If there should be anything to say about virtue, it must be both one thing and many things, so that it is a nonsensical question to ask which of the two it is. The only question which remains is, in what sense it is one thing and in what sense many.

5 We might say that it is one thing to the extent that the highest good is one thing, and many things to the extent that the highest good consists of diverse spheres.

6 This cannot be the case, however, partly because these four spheres have a common root in the family, which also forms one sphere, so that in virtue, by means of which the human being exists within a family, the other virtues, by means of which he exists in every other sphere, would become a single entity again.

This would have to be printed in advance, as a sample, but then the rest should follow in its entirety.

Conditions for the depiction of a particular science

If any one especial science is to be perfectly depicted, it cannot begin purely on its own but must be related to a higher knowledge, and finally to the highest knowledge, from which all individual knowledge must proceed.

Introduction

1 The doctrine of duties cannot document the totality of movement, but only the system of consciousness in which they are absorbed.

2 The doctrine of duties is positioned between the other two in such a way that action in accordance with duty presupposes virtue and sets conditions on the highest good, but conversely, in the same way, it presupposes the highest good and sets conditions on virtue.

3 All action in accordance with duty is thus imperfect as such, because it is positioned right in the middle between two ways of shaping virtue and the highest good.

4 Duty is therefore rectification and production.

5 Duty is not autonomous movement on the part of reason; on the contrary, reason is the moving [force] and nature that which is moved.

6 Thus we cannot describe it solely in terms of cause, nor solely in terms of effect, but only in terms of the interaction of the two.

Introduction

Transition from critique to real depiction

1 The communication of a single distinct science cannot have any proper starting-point.

2 The individual science cannot have at its head a proposition which is immediately certain.

3 Even when deducing it from a higher science it can only be understood in conjunction with other knowledge which stands in opposition to it.

4 The establishment of this opposition can appear only as opinion.

5 Every science has a number of shapes. The very act of beginning creates a basis for one such shape, and yet it contains knowledge only inasmuch as it is comprehended historically in conjunction with the others. The history of the sciences cannot exist without the sciences themselves, however, which gives rise to a circularity.

6 We already know something of every science by virtue of common life and common critique.

7 This influence cannot be to the good where ethics is concerned, because of the unfavorable phenomenon whereby a number of approaches start from very different assumptions but end with the same results, thus [suggesting] either error or scientific inconsistency.

8 Eudaemonistic ethics are hypothetical in the individual instance, because a purpose can be achieved in various ways, which in reality are in opposition to one another, while only one of them may be chosen. At most, therefore, they are an exposition of inclination: in the individual instance on technical grounds, and as a whole, because choice is based on inclination.

9 The Kantian form of rational ethics posits guiding thoughts to any action and can therefore only correct or perfect; it cannot, even were one to submit to it entirely, construct out of nothing.

Introduction

1 Since the interrelation of reason and nature which we have taken as our premise in the domain of the doctrine of morals is the reasonableness of human nature, taken independently of all action, and yet this interrelation, which must be conceived in moral terms, encompasses all those aspects of nature which come into lively contact with human nature, then the totality of everything that can be posited as having an independent moral existence is the totality of our conception of the effects of human reason in the whole of earthly nature.

2 Inasmuch as all being, as expressed in the doctrine of morals, is the expression of the action of reason and nature together upon nature, the interrelation of nature and reason is to be thought of as nature organized for reason, and the activity of reason as an organizing principle.

In the science of criticism it is initially a difficult task to orient oneself appropriately in relation to the object of criticism.

If there were more time it would not be without interest if we tried to show how the task and the name of the science have been modified in the course of time. As it is we can only look at the present state of things.

If we consider the expression criticism etymologically, then two things come into consideration, one the one hand, that criticism is in some sense a court of judgement, on the other, that it is a comparison. Both sometimes coincide, but also sometimes diverge.

As it has become a technical expression the word is very difficult to consider as a real unity. We use it in relation to scientific works and to works of art. If we combine this double relationship, then for this kind of criticism an expression of Fr. August Wolf might not be inappropriate, namely that of doctrinal criticism. The real tendency is always to compare single products with their idea: that is the court of judgement, but also to consider details in relation to other details, and that is comparison. But both then go back together into One, form one doctrine. In this way the opposition between historical and philological criticism still persists. Summarising its unity as well as possible, the task of historical criticism is to construct the facts out of accounts, thus to determine how the account relates to the fact. Philological criticism is divided into higher and lower.

(from Friedrich Schleiermachers Dialektik, ed. R. Odebrecht, Leipzig 1942, pp. 370–81)

Knowledge rests … on two characteristics: on general identity of construction and on agreement with the being to which the thought refers. As far as the latter is concerned, we have stated: If we do not assume a general belonging together of the inner process with being, to the extent that it affects the organic function, then there is no truth in relation to being affected from outside, and we would only have sensation. For nothing becomes an object for us unless the organic impression becomes an image and is related to something particular. All truth therefore depends on our assuming:

1. The general images which form themselves in us are identical with the system of innate concepts.

2. The relation of the organic impressions to these images expresses what the fixed differences in being themselves are.

Admittedly mistakes are often made in relating the general image to a particular. (If I, e.g., see a horse as a cow.) But then precisely only if one does not possess the organic impression completely enough and does not wait for the meeting [of general image and particular]. But the general image retains its truth (the general concept ‘animal’ is always there as a true basis), even if the relation is mistaken.

Introduction

1. Hermeneutics as the art of understanding does not yet exist in a general manner, there are instead only several forms of specific hermeneutics.

1. Only the art of understanding, not the presentation of understanding as well. This would only be a special part of the art of speaking and writing, which could only depend on the general principles.

2. But also not only [understanding] of difficult passages in foreign languages. Familiarity with the object and the language are instead presupposed. If both are [presupposed] then passages become difficult only because one has also not understood the more easy passages. Only an artistic understanding continually accompanies speech and writing.

3. It has usually been thought that for the general principles one can rely on healthy common sense. But in that case one can rely on healthy feeling for the particular principles as well.

2. It is difficult adequately to situate general hermeneutics.

1. For a time it was admittedly treated as an appendix to logic, but when everything to do with application was given up in logic, this had to cease as well.

Copy made by August Twesten in 1811 of the original manuscript, which is no longer extant. Transcription by Wolfgang Virmond.

Introduction

1. Hermeneutics rests on the fact of the non-understanding of discourse: taken in its most general sense, including misunderstanding in the mother tongue and in everyday life.

2. Non-understanding is partly indeterminacy, partly ambiguity of the content.

So it is thought of without any fault on the part of the utterer.

3. The art of explication is therefore the art of putting oneself in possession of all the conditions of understanding.

4. Others wrongly include the presentation of understanding in this.

Whence in Ernesti the chapter on the writing of commentaries. This presentation is, though, itself a kind of composition, thus in turn an object of hermeneutics. – Cause lies in the Greek etymology of the word.

5. But the explanation seems to contain too much because it presupposes knowledge of the language and of the matter in question in the original reader and listener.

Hermeneutics first of all sends one to grammar and to the sciences, otherwise it would have to take over all [forms of] instruction itself.

6. But one only arrives at language itself and the knowledge of supersensuous things via the understanding of human discourse.

Hermeneutics is therefore not built upon philology, but instead there is a changing relationship between it and philology, which makes the borders between them hard to determine.