Ethics
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ETHICS

Dietrich von Hildebrand

HILDEBRAND PROJECT

First published as Christian Ethics

New York: David McKay Company, 1953.

Second edition published as Ethics

Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1972.

Published 2020 by Hildebrand Press

1235 University Blvd., Steubenville, Ohio 43952

Copyright © 2020 Dietrich von Hildebrand Legacy Project

All rights reserved

Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Von Hildebrand, Dietrich, 1889-1977, author. | Crosby, John F., 1944–, author.

Title: Ethics / by Dietrich von Hildebrand ; introduction by John F. Crosby.

Description: Includes bibliographical references and index. | Steubenville, OH: Hildebrand Press, 2020.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019917180 | ISBN 9781939773159

Subjects: LCSH Ethics. | Christian ethics—Catholic authors. | Phenomenology. | Christianity—Philosophy. | Conduct of life. | BISAC PHILOSOPHY / Ethics & Moral Philosophy | PHILOSOPHY / Movements / Phenomenology | PHILOSOPHY / Movements / Realism. | RELIGION / Christian Theology / Ethics

Classification: LCC BJ1249 .V6 2019 | DDC 171.1—dc23

Cover Design by Marylouise McGraw

Cover Image: The Good Samaritan by John Adam Houston, in the Royal Scottish Academy of Art and Architecture. Image licensed from www.artuk.org

Front Cover Font: Circular Bold by Laurenz Brunner

Produced by Christopher T. Haley

www.hildebrandproject.org

Dietrich von Hildebrand

Contents

Introductory Study to Dietrich von Hildebrand’s Ethics by John F. Crosby

Preface

Prolegomena

part one

i. value and motivation

1. The Notion of Importance in General

2. Importance and Motivation

3. The Categories of Importance

4. The Useful

5. The Primacy of Value

6. The Role of Value in Man’s Life

ii. the reality of value against its detractors

7. The Categories of Importance as Properties of Beings

8. The Irreducible Character of Value

9. Relativism

iii. fundamental aspects of the sphere of values

10. Ontological and Qualitative Values

11. Unity of Values

12. Value and Being

13. The Good Tidings of Values

14. God and Values

part two

i. value and morality

15. The Nature of Moral Values

16. Morality and Reasonability

17. Value-response

18. Due Relation

19. Moral Consciousness

ii. freedom

20. Introductory Remarks

21. The Two Perfections of the Will

22. Freedom and Animal Voluntariness

23. The Range of the First Dimension of Freedom

24. Direct and Indirect Freedom

25. Cooperative Freedom

The Spheres of Affective Responses

26. Indirect Influence of Man’s Freedom

iii. the sources of moral goodness

27. The Three Spheres of Morality

The Sphere of Actions

The Sphere of Responses

The Sphere of Virtues

28. Moral “Rigorism”

29. The Role of the Objective Good for the Person

iv. roots of moral evil

30. The Problem of Moral Evil

31. Centers of Morality and Immorality

32. Forms of Coexistence of Good and Evil in Man

33. Legitimate Interest in the Subjectively Satisfying

34. Concupiscence

35. Pride

v. conclusion

36. Christian Ethics

Index

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Ethics

About Ethics

Dietrich von Hildebrand offers here the most nuanced version we have of a value-based ethics, building on the ethics of Max Scheler, but going far beyond it. The Prolegomena of the work gives an account of Hildebrand’s understanding of phenomenology. In the first fourteen chapters Hildebrand lays out a general theory of value, in which he distinguishes himself from his predecessors by not limiting value to the sense of what is good for the human person, but instead placing at the center of his reflections what is good and worthy in itself, prior to its beneficent impact on human persons. On this basis he develops his signature concept of value-response, wherein a person gives value its due, along with his signature concept of the transcendence of the person in value-response. He re-thinks virtue theory on the basis of his value philosophy, and in doing so he places virtue at the center of his ethics long before the revival of virtue theory in Anglo-American thought. Of particular importance is his re-thinking of moral evil in its different forms, and he throws new light on the question how it is possible knowingly to do wrong. The book concludes with a probing account of the religious dimension of the moral life and the place of God in morality.

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