Ethics
摘要
In this chapter, I undertake a systematic reassessment of Lipps’s ethics, one of the most neglected dimensions of his thought. First, I discuss the three chief characteristics of Lippsian ethical thought, namely, Lipps’s close relation to Kant’s practical philosophy, his discussion of the role of psychology in the analysis of ethical phenomena, and his adherence to an altruistic ethics. Second, I show how, in the first edition of Vom Fühlen, Wollen und Denken (1902), Lipps proposes a sort of “psychoaffective” reassessment of certain aspects of Kant’s practical philosophy. Third, I address the crucial question of the place of empathy in Lipps’s ethics. Here I comment on his fluctuating empathological terminology and on his distinction between “practical” and “aesthetic” empathy, and between “basic” and “reflective” sympathy. Fourth, I analyze the antipsychologistic turn that, from 1905 onward, informed Lipps’s practical philosophy and led him to regard “ethical demand” as the foundation of practical reason. Fifth and last, I highlight the fact that, beyond ethics, Lipps was interested in a variety of related fields: after saying a word about his political philosophy and his philosophy of law, I show how he envisions the foundations of sociology in his article Die soziologische Grundfrage (1907).