“we are gifted with self-consciousness,” that is, we are conscious of our “I.” Strictly speaking, the individual has achieved, in relation to the environment, a position of greater or lesser equilibrium. Explaining the norms under which greater or lesser equilibrium is achieved is the task of ethics. ®) Ethical norms, according to Spencer, are nothing more than definitions of the conditions under which an individual can achieve the highest degree of development. Moreover, ethical, in the full sense of this word, can be called not that individual whose impulse of moral behavior is ‘Bentham’s sanksha’, but his whole being, hereinafter, is so imbued with morality that a sign of identity can be put between a moral and emotional-intellectual personality. (Speaking about such a tendency in the development of morality, Spencer recalls the words of G. Maine, which he calls the deep truth - “the unit of ancient society was the family,” and the unit of “modern society is the individual”).
1) Empirical utilitarianism asserted the center of gravity on the individual feelings of pleasure and suffering, and epistemological empiricism, as we have seen, asserted more knowledge on individual experience. Empiricism made the same mistake that the rationalism of Cartesianism allowed. This error is solipseism. A person is viewed in relation to other living beings, and in relation to other people too separately. We have seen that Spencer introduced man, preserving the significance of the principle of individuality, into the ranks of living beings of the whole world. Spencer himself speaks about the second amendment of the utilitarian doctrine in his letters to S. Mill: morality, in its own right, is the science of proper behavior. It aims to explain how and why some behaviors are harmful and others are beneficial. These evils and evil consequences cannot be accidental, but must be necessary consequences arising from the nature of things. (It is interesting to compare the definition of Montesquieu’s laws with this. See above). The task of the science of governmentality is to make a deductive deduction from the laws of life and the conditions of existence of which acts entail happiness and which harm. (Mill responded by refusing to admit that svdtviya must be necessary). Thus, Spencer corrects the error of utilitarian empiricism, which states: every individual strives for happiness. He complements this proposition with the answer: why does every individual and, for that matter, all people strive for happiness?
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The principle of justice, which according to Spencer, is the 146th shbge, of morality, is the law (Induschi Sosholomi $ 322) that each individual should enjoy support in proportion to its helplessness, but, having reached adulthood, it must enjoy benefits in proportion to its behavior. Without obeying such a law, the species would die out in one generation. For Spencer, this law serves as a connecting link between the general conclusions of sociology and the science of rights and states. In it I Spencer returns to the ethics of public life; Its chapter entitled: “Justice” is devoted to this teaching, which we will dwell on in connection with the thoughts developed by the author in the treatise “The Individual versus the State.” Here, in the study of social ethics, the above law of individual morality is 2) supplemented by the following correction: the actions of an individual, determined by its nature, must find the necessary limitation in not interfering with the same actions of other individuals 3). Moving on to human justice, Spencer remains faithful to his general law of comprehensive evolution: just as the development of human life is the further development of pre-human life, he says, so human justice is the development of pre-human justice. In both cases, justice regulates the relationship between the individual and the social environment. Emerging, as a result of such relationships, feelings and ideas of justice contain elements of two types: egoistic and altrupsic (feelings), negative and positive (ideas). Any interference caused to an individual's activities outrages his egoistic sense of justice. Clamp
1) Foundations of the science of morality $5,247–249.
*) It is also called by Spencer in the chapter on “justice” the law of pre-human justice. 3) 1b. $258.
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