Dooyeweerd: ETHICS: Aalders, Brunner, Luther

"Rubha na h-Adhairc ga chur fodha" le Montague Dawson (c. 1959)

'Rubha-Adhairc' 

na h-EITICE Crìosdail.

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The 'Cape Horn' 

of Christian ETHICS.

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RUDOLPH VON JHERING called the logical distinction between law and morality the 'Cape Horn' (2) of legal philosophy. It would be more correct, perhaps, to say that if the modal boundaries between the different law-spheres are neglected, every theoretical distinction of a meaning-aspect from the others is a veritable 'Cape Horn' of philosophy. For how is theoretical thought to form a correct notion of these meaning-aspects, if their modal structure in the intermodal coherence of the cosmic time-order is lost sight of ?

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(2) Cape Horn was notorious for its dangerous storms.

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At present the prevailing conception (but not in the naturalistic sociological view) distinguishes between legal order and morality according to a threefold criterion:

1 - law is an external social order; morality is an internal norm of the individual human conscience;

2 - law is heteronomous, imposed by an external authority; morality is only binding on the individual conscience;

3 - law is a compulsory order sanctioned by organized constraint; morality demands voluntary observance.

A preliminary question. Does there exist a modal ethical law-sphere or moral aspect of experience with an irreducible modal meaning? 

The distinction between the world of experience and the I-thou relation in Jewish and Christian existentialism.

From our previous analysis of the modal structure of law it has appeared that this distinction is quite unsatisfactory with respect to the inner modal meaning of the juridical aspect (see chart above).

Does it correspond to the inner modal sense of morality? Here a preliminary question urges itself upon Christian thought. In our earlier investigations it was continually supposed that there exists a specific ethical or moral modal law-sphere. But can this supposition be maintained from the Christian viewpoint?

The dialectical distinction between the 'world of experience' as an impersonal I-it relation and the existential I-thou relation is nothing but a modern irrationalist version of the dialectical basic motive of Humanism [ie ‘Mechanistic Nature versus Personal Freedom’]. It is intrinsically un-Biblical.

It deforms the integral structure of human experience and eliminates its relation to the central religious [ie ultimate transcendent root] sphere.

The world of experience seems to be impersonal and non-existential only if we identify it with an absolutized theoretical abstraction ('nature' in the sense of the classical Humanist science-ideal). But this absolutised abstraction has nothing to do with the modal horizon [ie the full panoply of  ‘law-spheres’ aka ‘aspects of time’ aka ‘modalities of consciousness’] of human experience in its integral meaning from which we have started. On the other hand, the real meeting of I and thou is in the deepest sense a central, religious [ultimate transcendent root] relation, which indeed does not allow of modal boundaries of law-spheres. But if this central relation is sought within the temporal order of human existence, one gives oneself up to an idolatrous illusion.

Nevertheless, it is exactly the relation between Christian religion and ethics which is to be considered as the 'Cape Horn' of every Christian view of 'the moral sphere'. Can there be room for a modal moral aspect of human existence and experience which is to be distinguished from the central religious relation of I-we and I-Thou subjected to the central commandment of Love?

Can there be an ethical norm of love which is not identical with this commandment? If so, what is the meaning-kernel of the supposed moral aspect in which this norm functions? In our provisional delimitation of the ethical law-sphere we have assumed that this nuclear-meaning is to be designated by the word love. But if, according to the Biblical view, love is the very totality of meaning, the religious radical unity of all temporal modal diversity of law-spheres, how can there be room for love as a modal aspect of temporal human experience and empirical reality?

We have called the question concerning the modal meaning-kernel of the ethical aspect [see above chart] the 'Cape Horn' (i.e. the most dangerous point) of Christian ethics. In taking cognizance of different attempts to establish the real relation between the ethical sphere and the central commandment of Love we are confirmed in this opinion. We shall mention only two of them.

In his Manual of Ethics (1) the late Dutch theologian W. J. AALDERS, who was professor of ethics at the University of Groningen, clearly saw the necessity of a distinction between the ethical and the religious relation. He, too, seeks the qualifying meaning-moment of the former in love (2).

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(1) Handboek der Ethiek (Amsterdam 1941). See also his De Grond der Zedelijkheid (Groningen-Den Haag) 1933.

(2) Handboek, p. 129.

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But he sees no other way to distinguish ethical love from the central religious love than by introducing this distinction into the central commandment itself. The love of God, as the summary of the first table of the Decalogue, is considered as the religious relation proper which has directly to do with God. This love has a unilateral character insofar as the creature is dependent on the Creator but not vice versa. The love of the neighbour as the summary of the second table of the Decalogue, is considered as the ethical relation which has directly to do with the creation, especially with our fellow-man, and only indirectly with God. This relation is a real correlation because it is bilateral. So the author concludes that the ethical sphere of love is that of creation (3).

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(3) ib., p. 123 fl.

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In this way he thinks he can escape the danger of moralizing religion, on the one hand, and that of an absorption of morality by religion, on the other. The moral [ethical] sphere remains dependent on the central religious one without being dissolved into the latter.

Though this intention deserves the greatest respect, it must be denied that AALDERS has succeeded in correctly delimiting the ethical aspect in its relation to the Christian religion. In our opinion it is a fundamental mistake to seek the criterion within the central commandment of Love itself. The latter is an unbreakable unity and does not permit itself to be considered as a composite of a religious and a moral part.

In its religious fulness of meaning the love of our neighbour is nothing but the love of God in His image, expressed in ourselves as well as in our fellow-men. This is why Christ said that the second commandment is equal to the first. One can also say that it is implied in it.

If the central commandment of Love is indeed the radical unity of all the temporal modal law-spheres, it must be impossible to delimit within it a specific ethical aspect [ie law-sphere/ modality]. If we see aright AALDERS has arrived at his conception under the influence of the existentialistic view of MARTIN BUBER, who considered ethics as the sphere of the I-thou relation in its dialectical opposition to the contemplative I-it relation of human experience (4).

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(4) Op. cit., p. 125.

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Here it appears once again that this dialectical existentialism cannot be accepted without detracting from the integral and radical meaning of the Christian religion. AALDERS doubtless would positively deny every intention to do so. Nevertheless, in spite of his unsuspected intention, he could not escape from a partial moralization of the central religious sphere in consequence of his acceptance of the dialectical opposition between the existential I-thou relation and the contemplative sphere of human experience. Starting from this opposition, he was unable to conceive of the ethical sphere as a modal aspect of the temporal horizon of experience and reality. In order to avoid its reduction to the religious sphere he could find no way out but a limitation of the latter to the effect that the central commandment of Love was divided into a religious and an ethical part. In addition, a distinction was made between the sphere of religion and the sphere of creation, and this is incompatible with the Biblical conception. The central religious sphere belongs to creation as well as the temporal sphere of human existence which embraces the ethical relation.


Together with the existentialistic opposition between the ethical sphere and the contemplative sphere of experience AALDERS accepted the dialectical Humanistic motive of ‘nature and freedom’. Morality [in Aalders’ view] is separated from the 'lower vegetative and animal functions of human life', ruled by natural laws, and is localized in the 'higher sphere' of freedom or 'spirit', ruled by norms (5).

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(5) Op. cit., p. 84.

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This means that the second part of the central religious commandment of Love, which AALDERS reserved for ethics, is related to an abstracted complex of normative functions of temporal human existence, instead of being related to the religious centre of the whole of temporal human functions. So it loses its absolute character and is denatured to a specific norm (6) regulating only the higher temporal volitional life of man.

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(6) A 'norm' is always a rational standard, founded in the logical manner of distinction. Therefore it is confusing to call the central commandment of Love a norm. In my opinion this term is to be applied only to temporal standards of what ought to be. The religious commandment is identical with what we have called in the Prolegomena: the religious concentration-law of human existence. It cannot be opposed to 'laws of nature', as is done with norms. [Note that on the above law-sphere chart the Analytical Aspect and all aspects ascending from that are “norms”. Normative laws such as the law of logical non-contradiction can in practice be infringed but not fruitfully.]

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A second example of a serious confusion of love, as the modal meaning-nucleus of the ethical aspect, with love in the fulness of its central religious sense is to be found in EMIL BRUNNER's famous work Das Gebot und die Ordnungen (Tübingen, 1932).

Already in his definition of Christian ethics: "Christian ethics is the science of human conduct determined by divine action" (7) he reveals his aim to merge Christian morals [ie a single temporal law-sphere] into the Christian religion [ie the time-transcending integral core of all the (fifteen) differentiated law-spheres/ aspects] , which is diametrically opposed to the moralization of religion [reduction of the transcendent center to the absolutised analytical aspect/ law-sphere] in rationalistic Humanism. This leads to a fundamentally erroneous definition of the relation between love and justice [juridical aspect/ law-sphere].

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(7) Op. cit., p. 73: "Christliche Ethik ist die Wissenschaft von dem durch das göttliche Handeln bestimmte menschliche Handeln".

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According to BRUNNER the love mentioned in the central divine commandment is absolute. It concerns the whole person, and is concrete and not legal. Justice, on the contrary, is universal, legal, "vorausgewusst, unpersönlich-sachlich, abstrakt, rational" (known in advance, impersonal, objective, abstract, rational).

That's why, according to this writer, it is a contradictio in terminis to speak of 'perfect justice': for what is perfect cannot be justice (8) [Daarom is het volgens den schrijver een contradictio in terminis van een ‘volkomen gerechtigheid’ te spreken: ‘denn das Vollkommene kann nicht Gerechtigkeit sein.’ (WdW Deel2 p98)].

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(8) Op. cit., p. 436/7.

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Even when we speak of Divine justice we mean [from Aalders’ viewpoint] nothing concrete and material but "jene formalen Qualitäten der Entsprechung, der Zuverlässigkeit und Konstanz göttlichen Handelns" [“these formal qualities of the consistency, the reliability and the constancy of divine actions”]. For in the idea of justice is implied especially: 'the idea of the reliability, of the objective and active operation of a rule that has been imposed on us, and which we know as such' (9).

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(9) Ib.: "Die Idee der Zuverlässigkeit der objectiven und wirksamen Geltung einer "gesetzten" und als gesetzt bekannten Regel."

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Here the fundamental error in BRUNNER's view is laid bare. In this view it is forgotten that the fulness of meaning of love, as revealed in Christ's cross, is at the same time the fulness of justice. If we assign a higher place to Divine love than to Divine justice, this procedure necessarily detracts from God's holiness. In his later work Die Gerechtigkeit BRUNNER appears to have avoided this error.

In fact BRUNNER contradicted himself by saying that justice is the pre-supposition of love, and that love which has not passed through justice, is arbitrary, unreal [onzakelijk], sentimental. If love requires justice for its pre-supposition, it cannot be absolute, "unbedingt" [“unconditioned”], in contrast with justice.

BRUNNER's error is that he opposes love, as the exclusive content of the fulness of God's commandment, to the 'temporal ordinances', which owing to the fall show God's will only in a broken state. He wants to build Christian ethics on the basis of the actions proceeding from this love within the formal framework of all the temporal ordinances. This is an after-effect of the dualistic scheme of ‘nature and grace’ in LUTHER's world of thought (10).

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(10) Cf. Vol. I, ch. 3.

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It leads to the identification of morality with the Christian religion, and at the same time it leads to a misinterpretation of the temporal moral meaning of love, i.e. of the moral aspect [law-sphere] of temporal human experience and existence.

That's why everywhere in this ethics antinomies arise. For BRUNNER's conception of love as the opposite of justice is not really Biblical, but much rather an absolutising of the temporal modal [aspectual] meaning of love. Only the latter can be significantly opposed to the meaning of justice as another aspect [law-sphere] of temporal reality, and to the modal meaning of the other law-spheres. Anyone who tries to do so with the [transcendent central decalogue-summation] fulness of meaning of love, violates its religious fulness. He has no eye for the new religious root of creation in Christ as the concentration-point and the fulness of all the temporal meaning-aspects.

It is an essentially un-Biblical thought to deny Divine Justice its perfection by calling it a 'merely formal idea', and to seek that perfection only in love. [Het is in wezen on-Christelijk, on-schriftuurlijk gedacht, aan de Goddelijke Gerechtigheid als een ‘bloot formeele idee’ de volkomenheid te ontzeggen en die volkomenheid alleen in de liefde te zoeken. (WdW Deel 2 p 100)]

(Herman Dooyeweerd, New Critique of Theoretical Thought, Vol II/ Part I/ Chapt 2/§5 pp 154-158)

Dooyeweerd: ETHICS: niùclas nucleus

"A'Bhean-bainnse Iùdhach" le Rembrandt (1667)

Niùclas-cèille tùsail 

an raoin-lagha MHORALTA. 

GRÀDH na thùs-sheagh modalach 

agus analoidean sna raointean eile.

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The original meaning-nucleus 

of the MORAL law-sphere. 

LOVE in its original modal sense 

and its analogies in the other aspects.

    Every attempt at defining the ethical sphere without indicating its modal meaning-kernel must result in an inescapable conflict with the central religious sphere of human existence.

     One may try to solve this conflict either by reducing religion to morality or by reducing the latter to the former. Both attempts, however, are tantamount to a destruction of morality in its temporal meaning and are a serious threat to the central place of the radical commandment of Love in the fulness of its religious sense.

     On the other hand, every serious attempt at an analysis of the modal meaning-structure of the moral relation leads us back to love as its irreducible kernel. There can be no single really moral 'virtue' which in the last analysis is not a manifestation of this modal nucleus of the ethical law-sphere (1).

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(1) This is clearly seen by CALVIN in his Comment. in ep. ad Col. 3 :14, where he observes that 'the whole chorus of virtues is summarized in love. For it is the rule of the whole of life and of all actions; everything that is not reduced to it, is wrong, how great the splendour may be it has in another respect.'

["Agus thar na nithean seo uile, cuiribh umaibh gràdh, nì as e coicheangal na foirfeachd." (Colosianaich 3:14)

"Über alles aber ziehet an die Liebe, die da ist das Band der Vollkommenheit." (Kolosser 3:14 Luther Bibel 1545)

"And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity." (Colossians 3:14 NIV)]

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     But love in this temporal nuclear meaning cannot be the same as love in its religious fulness. The former is only a temporal modal meaning-refraction of the latter, determined by the whole inter-modal coherence of the different law-spheres in the order of cosmic time. Love, as the moral modality of human experience, cannot exist apart from its immediate foundation in the retributive meaning of the juridical aspect. The preceding modal aspects refer to it in the moral anticipations of their modal structures. In the biotic aspect, for instance, it is anticipated by the human sexual drive in its natural direction to moral unity in love: in the (sensory/psychic) feeling-aspect we meet with the moral feeling of love disclosing itself in different typical ways (cf. the feeling-impulse to help a fellow man who is in distress; the feeling-impulse of filial or parental love etc.). Even in the anticipatory structure of the logical aspect there is an inner coherence with the moral meaning-kernel of Love in the theoretical eros which has to direct the whole of our scientific activity and is a guarantee of 'logical morality' and integrity. In the cultural (historical) aspect we discover a moral anticipation in cultural love of our form-giving task in human civilization. In the lingual aspect a moral anticipation is implied in the love of a language, a tendency to signify our feelings, volition, thoughts etc. in the linguistically most adequate way inspired by the affection for language in its pure form.

Love and the conventions of social intercourse.

     In the modal aspect of [social] intercourse the social conventions have an inner anticipatory connection with love in its moral nuclear meaning.

     This is clearly shown by Jesus Christ who contrasts the love of the prostitute who had anointed his feet with very costly spikenard, with the uncourtly attitude of the pharisee who had invited him but had omitted to observe the eastern forms of courtesy towards the Rabbi of Nazareth. Jesus shows here that courtesy and social convention in general are not indifferent things. They should be directed and animated by love. Nevertheless the conventions of social intercourse as such are not to be reduced to morality in its original modal meaning-nucleus. Therefore it is confusing to call them 'positive morality', as is done by the so-called empiricist trends in ethics.

     The economic aspect, too, has an anticipatory coherence with the moral meaning-nucleus. The frugal manner of administering scarce things in their alternative destination for the satisfaction of human needs, acquires a positive relation to morality if it is directed by love towards our neighbour. Here it implies a voluntary restriction of our own needs for the sake of the needs of our fellow-men. In this sense frugality is rightly called a virtue, but only if it is considered from the moral viewpoint of love.

Eros and Agapè.

     The aesthetic aspect opens its inner connection with the moral law-sphere in its anticipatory meaning-moment of aesthetic love. This is the eros, as PLATO has described it in his splendid dialogue Symposium, an aesthetical love-drive to the beautiful which functions as a mediator between sensory life and the super-sensory Idea of beauty.

     Modern Christian ethics has paid much attention to the radical difference between this Greek aesthetical eros and the Christian agapè. Indeed neither PLATO, nor any Greek thinker, knew the religious fulness of meaning implied in the central commandment of Love. Nor did PLATO know love as the original modal meaning-kernel of morality. His eros is nothing but an analogy of love in the modal structure of the aesthetic aspect. But the Platonic conception of eros should not be criticized from the dialectical viewpoint of modern existentialism. That is to say, we should not think that the aesthetic eros is opposite to the Christian agapè as the contemplative experience with its I—it relation to the existential sphere of the I—thou relation. On the contrary, it is necessary to stress the inner meaning-coherence between the aesthetical eros and love as the modal meaning-kernel of the moral aspect in order to relate both to the central religious sense of the Agapè.

     It is clearly testified both in the Old and the New Testament that 'aesthetic love' has its legitimate place in the entire temporal coherence of the aspects of God's creation and has a concentric relation to the central commandment of Love. In the temporal order of experience the love of God implies the aesthetical enjoyment of the beauty of His creation which is worthy of this human eros. But the latter appeals to love in its modal nuclear meaning and should reflect the central love to God and the neighbour within the modal boundaries of the aesthetical sphere. The very orientation of the Platonic eros to the Greek form-matter motive reveals its apostate direction.

(Herman Dooyeweerd, New Critique of Theoretical Thought, Vol II/ Part I/ Chapt 2/§5 pp 151-154)

Dooyeweerd: ETHICS: Heymans, Barth, Kant

"Ja! Nein!" - Foto le Alasdair Nicol (flickr)

EITIC

agus an caractar daonna.

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ETHICS

and the human character.

     What is called the 'character' of man is the individual result of a pedagogical shaping of the flexible hereditary factors of disposition of the inner act-life in its confrontation with the influences of social environment. It belongs to the bodily existence of man, as will be explained more in detail in my anthropology. The human body is not at all identical with an abstract 'physico-psychical soma'; it is the structural whole of temporal human existence in the intermodal coherence of all its modal aspects.

     It may be that 'character' is to be sought especially in the volitional direction of the inner act-life; nevertheless it cannot be identified with the moral aspect-function of the volitional disposition or -inclination in its individual shape and stamp. Therefore the relating of virtue to character, as is done in modern times by the Dutch philosopher G. HEYMANS (1), cannot give a modal delimitation to the field of ethics. Psychology, too, has much to do with the human character (2). 

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(1) Einführung in die Ethik, Leipzig (1922).

(2) HEYMANS (op. cit. p. 43) defines character as 'the totality of the inclinations of the individual in their mutual relations of strength' (die Gesamtheit der Neigungen dieses Individuums in ihren gegenseitigen Stärkeverhältnissen); or as 'the whole of the laws, in conformity to which in this individual stronger or weaker motives evoke stronger or weaker wishes and thereby contribute more or less to the determination of the particular volitional decisions' (die Gesamtheit der Gesetze, nach welchen bei diesem Individuum verschiedene Motive stärkere oder schwächere Wünsche hervorrufen und dadurch mehr oder weniger zur Bestimmung der einzelnen Willensentschlüsse beitragen".)

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But the moral aspect is different from that of feeling, although HEYMANS seeks the origin of the ethical norm in a specific moral feeling. Nevertheless HEYMANS speaks of 'character' in its relation to the standards of good and evil as the veritable object of ethical judgment and defines ethics as the 'science of good and evil'. But it has appeared that in their scientific use the latter terms are analogical ones. They lack, as such, modal delimitation of sense. If we mean moral good and evil we must be able to indicate the modal meaning-kernel of morality in order to escape the vicious circle inherent in every undefined analogy.

     HEYMANS' merely formal ethical criterium of 'objectivity' or 'universality' has no moral meaning at all.

     Only with reference to the central religious sphere may the terms good and evil be used in their fulness of meaning without any modal qualification. As to their ethical sense we must agree with NIETZSCHE and NICOLAI HARTMANN: 'We do not yet know what good and evil may be' (3).

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(3) NICOLAI HARTMANN, Ethik (1926, Berlin and Leipzig) p. 40.

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Why a moral law-sphere must exist.

    Now it cannot be denied that in the cosmic order of time a modal law-sphere must exist which succeeds the juridical and precedes the ultimate limiting aspect, viz, that of faith. This is demonstrated by our previous analysis of the anticipatory moments in the modal structure of the legal law-sphere, which, as soon as they are realized in a positive legal order, appear to open and deepen the retributive meaning of this modal sphere. Modal meaning-figures, such as juridical guilt, good faith, good morals, equity, and so on, undeniably refer to a later modal aspect of experience which cannot be designated by another term than the moral or ethical sphere. The anticipatory meaning-moments concerned refer neither immediately to the faith aspect, nor immediately to the central religious sphere.

     In pre-juridical aspects, such as the psychical [sensory], we have also discovered anticipatory relations with an ethical law-sphere.

     This does not prove the existence of a natural morality apart from the religious centre of human existence. It proves only that in the temporal modal horizon of experience there exists a modal ethical aspect which is not to be identified with the super-modal sphere of religion, nor with the aspect of faith.

     Therefore the conception developed especially by KARL BARTH, that there is no room for ethics as a specific science different from theological dogmatics, cannot be maintained. But this does not detract from the extremely difficult problem we are confronted with, if from the Biblical-Christian standpoint the attempt is made to account for the relation between the ethical aspect and the central commandment of Love. The question of the modal meaning-kernel of this aspect urges itself upon Christian thought as a real 'Cape Horn' (4) of Christian ethics.

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(4) Cape Horn was notorious for its dangerous storms.

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Criticism of KANT'S criterion of morality. Love and the imago Dei.

     Before considering this problem in greater detail we must return to KANT's criterion of morality, explained above. It must be established that his 'Gesinnungsethik' ["Ethics of attitude/conviction"]* was really meant to replace the central commandment of Love in its religious fulness of meaning. This commandment requires us to love God and our neighbour with our whole heart. It is the very nature of love in this central religious sense that it implies complete self-surrender. We cannot really love in this fulness of meaning of the word so long as we experience its requirement as a law which urges itself upon us externally, contrary to the inner inclination of our heart. This love must penetrate our inner selves, it must inflame the centre of our existence and permeate it so that it has become one with us, and reflects in our heart the Divine Love as the answer of the human I to the call of its Origin, the Divine Thou.
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*FMF - "Denn das Wort Gottes ist lebendig und wirksam und schärfer als jedes zweischneidige Schwert, und es dringt durch, bis es scheidet Seele und Geist, auch Mark und Bein, und ist ein Richter der Gedanken und Gesinnungen des Herzens." (Hebraeer 4:12)
["Oir tha facal Dhè beò agus cumhachdach, agus nas gèire na claidheamh dà fhaobhair air bith, a' ruigheachd eadhon a-chum eadar-sgaradh an anama agus an spioraid, agus nan alt agus nan smear, agus a' toirt breith air smuaintean agus rùintean a' chridhe." (Eabh. 4:12)]
["For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart." (Hebrews 4:12)]
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     This is the real meaning of the imago Dei. It explains why the human ego can be nothing in itself as an autonomous being. It explains why the fall into sin has radically obscured this imago Dei, so that it is only revealed in its original sense in the infinite love of Jesus Christ in His complete self-surrender to His heavenly Father and to lost mankind. Only from Him can this love flow into the human heart. Apart from Him we do not know it, nor can there be any volitional disposition worthy of the name of 'good' in its proper religious sense.

     KANT's 'Gesinnungsethik' has secularized this religious state of things. It sought the true self, the real autos of man, in a 'pure will' which identifies itself with the ethical law originating from practical reason, so that autos and nomos become one and the same. But love is rejected in this ethics as the real moral motive of human behaviour. It is replaced by the respect for the ethical law in its pure form of categorical imperative, which in the last analysis means nothing but respect for the 'Idea of Mankind' in the sense of the Humanist personality-ideal. Love, on the contrary, is viewed as a sensory inclination, which is an impure motive because it detracts from the autonomy of morality. Here the dialectical tension between nature and freedom, the Humanist science-ideal and personality-ideal manifests itself in a pregnant sense (5).

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(5) Cf. Vol. I, Part II.

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     The Kantian conception of the freedom-motive seeks the true essence, the 'noumenon' of man, behind the temporal sensory reality of nature in the autonomous moral will as the law-giver for human conduct. That is why morality must be conceived of as entirely apart from the reality of nature and traced back to a pure, autonomous moral will. Legal order, however, has to reckon with 'empirical humanity' and should be content with the function of an order of external freedom in the coexistence of human individuals. It can be nothing but an order of peace.

     But KANT is unable to indicate what modal meaning is to be attached to 'autonomous morality'. The modal meaning of a law-sphere can only disclose itself in the intermodal coherence of meaning of all the aspects and this very coherence has been torn up in the Kantian conception.

     The sharp separation between moral disposition and natural sensuous inclination and the characterization of the impulse to follow the latter as the 'radical evil' in man, clearly shows the influence of the Christian conception of sin. But the latter has been secularized and denatured to an irreconcilable antithesis between two aspects of human existence and experience which are arranged by the temporal order of creation in an indissoluble structural coherence of meaning. The moral function of volition is closely connected with the volitional function in the aspect of feeling. There are moral feeling-drives which prevent man from an undisciplined surrender to sexual and other biotically founded impulses. Without the presence of such anticipatory drives in human feeling-life, the rational moral motives would be powerless.

     Even the Kantian conception of the moral motive, that of duty or respect for the moral law, if it is to have any moral meaning, pre-supposes a moral feeling-drive. The complete lack of the latter and the presence of a rational idea of duty only is a well-known pathological phenomenon. KANT's rigid separation between morality and natural feeling-drives is in serious danger of legitimating such pathological disintegrations of the inner act-life. It is inhuman and a-moral in its logicistic formalizing of the meaning of ethical duty and ethical law.

     On the other hand the thesis 'law only regulates external behaviour and is indifferent to motives' (6) is a clear proof that KANT does not only want to distinguish between law and morality, but really separates them.

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(6) This criterion was taken over from THOMASIUS, who made it serviceable to the defence of toleration in his doctrine of natural law.

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As a result the entire anticipatory structure of the modal meaning of the juridical aspect is misinterpreted. KANT only tries to maintain the connection between law and morality in an external teleological** way.

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**FMF - teleological: "showing evidence of design or purpose, especially in natural phenomena."

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He holds that juridical order is merely an order of legality, an order of external peace, which is meant to enable the individual to do his moral duties. But it has already appeared that the principle of guilt in criminal law and other anticipatory juridical concepts necessarily anticipate the moral meaning-aspect! They cannot be understood in their juridical sense without their internal coherence with morality.

     The moral meaning-aspect is not itself the super-temporal root of human existence, in spite of KANT's doctrine. It is as temporal and as relative as all the other meaning-sides of temporal reality. But the moral sphere, just like all the others, has a modal meaning that is sovereign within its own boundaries. KANT's logicistic-moralistic view-point inevitably compelled him to eliminate this modal meaning. His ethics is in fact a religion of human personality in a specific Humanistic conception.

(Herman Dooyeweerd, New Critique of Theoretical Thought, Vol II/ Part I/ Chapt 2/§5 pp 147-151)