Adolf Wuttke · 39 of 107
Section LXXVIII. The Inner Revelation and the Conscience. (Concl'd) · SECTION LXXXV.
To duty on the part of the moral subject, corresponds right on the part of the law. My duty is to fulfill the right of the moral law, that is, the right of God to, or his claim upon, me. The substance of dutiful action is therefore justice or right, and the product of this action is the right, i. e., the realized claim. Hence dutiful action is per se right-doing. Duty and right call for each other,—are but two phases of the same thing; to every right there corresponds a duty, and conversely,—simply the subjects are different; every duty is the expression of a right; another’s right in regard to me is for me a duty, and to the fulfillment of another’s duty in regard to me I have a right; the two ideas are absolutely correlative and co-extensive. In virtue of duty I accomplish the moral, for the law has a right, a claim, upon me; in virtue of right the moral is accomplished upon me; in the fulfilling of duty I keep the law; in my accomplishing of the right the law keeps me. The fulfilling of my duty obtains for me a right to, or claim upon, the moral law in so far as this law is an element of universal order, namely, the right to be a real, living, and hence free, member of the moral whole,—in other words, a. moral claim on the just recompense of God. There is, morally, no other right of an individual than such as is conditioned by a corresponding fulfillment of duty on his part; rights without duties would be a reversing of moral world-order. God has an absolutely unlimited right because he is absolutely holy, and man, as related to God, is under absolute obligations. All right has therefore its basis in God’s right and in God’s love. Hence in the Scriptures the notion of duty is nearly always presented as an indebtedness,—as the right of God to man, as what man owes to God. God’s has a right to in man, and hence is man’s duty; those who fulfill their duty are therefore the righteous.
As duty is not merely of a subjective character, a mere utterance of the individual consciousness, but the law as appropriated by the person, so also, and equally emphatically, is right also not a mere subjective something with no better basis than a merely fortuitous power of the individual. Every right of the individual is a special expression of the right of the whole, and is valid only in so far as this individual is in moral harmony with the whole. Whoever by undutiful conduct dissolves his union with the moral whole, loses thereby, in like measure, his right to or claim upon the whole. Duty and right are both an expression of the moral; the former is the moral as subjective obligation, the latter is the moral as objective requirement; both manifest the essence of the moral as an essential law of collective being. The individual has duties and rights only as in vital union with the whole. I have duties and rights, not in virtue of being a mere individual, but in virtue of the fact that the totality of being bears a moral character. From this it follows at once, that there can be true duties and rights only where the morality of the whole is based, not merely on the morality of the individual persons,—which would be a mere arguing in a circle,—but where it is based on the of the personality of God. I can keep and fulfill the law only when the law keeps and fulfills me; I can do my duty only when I therein recognize a right or claim of the moral whole, and hence of the holy God, upon me. An impersonal whole has no right to, nor claim upon, the personal spirit; from such a servitude Christianity has definitively emancipated human thought; nor has one man, as upon his fellow, any other right or claim than such as he derives from God; that is, he has it only by the of God; that man has per se a right upon his fellow, irrespective of God, is an un-Christian view; “Be not ye the servants of men” [1 Cor. vii, 23]; this is Christian right and Christian freedom.
In such a moral world-order where duty and right are absolutely correlative, where right extends as far as duty, and duty as far as right, every one receives strictly his own right—his due. The dutiful man has a right upon the moral whole,—a right to have his personality respected,—and it is thus that the moral law, the moral world-order, realizes itself on man; it upholds in a just and honorable position him who has upheld it. He who gives honor to God, to him God gives also his honor. Also he who violates duty receives his right; every punishment is the fulfilling of the right of God and of the collective universe upon the individual; the criminal has a right to the punishment; when the criminal comes to his right mind he demands himself his own punishment, and a child that is not totally perverted finds a moral tranquillization in suffering the punishment it deserves,—it even calls for it.
The notion that the fulfillment of moral duty acquires for man a claim upon the moral order of the world, and hence upon God, is emphatically rejected by Schwarz (Eth. I, p. 199), who even declares such a view as blasphemous; God alone, he holds, is the absolutely-entitled One; man has, as toward God, simply duties, but no rights; God only can have claims upon us, not we upon God. And he appeals for support to Rom. ix, 20; xi, 35 sqq.; Job ix, 12; Luke xvii, 10. The first two passages, however, relate to the impossibility of fathoming the eternal divine counsel, and declare any doubt as to God’s and as unjustifiable; moreover all of them relate exclusively to the condition of sinfulness, in which we of course concede, in harmony with Scripture, that all salvation rests exclusively on the undeserved and compassionate mercy of God. We are now speaking, however, of man as not yet under sin, of the moral life in its unclouded purity, and here the matter stands very differently. If God’s is not a mere empty figure of speech, it must form the basis of a moral right; we cannot doubt that God rewards each according to his moral conduct; and when a truly moral creature receives from God a just reward [Rom. ii, 6, 7, 13], this is not a mere compassionating gift, but it is justice, and the creature has, in virtue of his , a claim upon such a reward. It is indeed a gracious gift of the Creator, that he has made the creature thus noble, that it is permitted to bear in itself God’s own image; but that God regards and treats the creature that has become positively holy, in view of and in reference to that fact, is simply justice. As the sinner receives but his right when the divine punishment falls upon him, so also the sinless creature receives but his right when he is an object of the divine pleasure. To think otherwise on this point would be to overthrow our notion of a holy and just God. The Scriptures express very distinctly this thought of the right of the moral person upon God, even in circumstances where, because of sin, there can no longer be any question of a right strictly speaking,—so that, then, it is in fact a pure that God, notwithstanding this, yet concedes to man such rights. Of the faith of Abraham, Paul says, “To him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of , but of debt” [Rom. iv, 4]; if therefore man should really and truly fulfill the law of God, then his reward would fall to him in due course of justice. The inference of the apostle, as to the worth of faith for sinful man, would not have the least basis should we presume to regard this declaration of his as per se meaningless and impossible; and this holds good in the fullest sense of man as untouched by sin, as also it is true of the Son of man. The true and real fulfilling of the law has in fact eternal life as its just reward [Matt. xix, 17]; the only question is, as to whether in fact any person perfectly fulfills the law as Christ did. The doctrine of for the is not interfered with by that of a claim of the moral man upon God, but receives in fact thereby its proper foundation. In the idea of the which God made with the Patriarchs, and as to which he himself says: “I have made a with my chosen, I have sworn to David my servant: Thy seed will I establish forever,” etc., there is contained also the idea of a right upon God as graciously conceded even to sinful man, provided he should obey the voice of God and keep his commandments [Psa. lxxxix, 4; Exod. ii, 24; xix, 5; Deut. vii, 8, 9, 12; ix, 5]. That God should make such a , is pure ; but now that He, the truthful One, has made it, it follows that those who keep it acquire thereby a right to its fulfillment on the part of God; and hence the pious of the Old make appeal in their petitions to the promises of God [Gen. xxxii, 12; Exod. xxxii, 13; Deut. ix, 26 sqq.]. The great emphasis which the Scriptures place upon the thought of the of God with man, which is, in fact, more than a promise, implies very clearly that here the moral character of God, as well as that of man, is essentially involved. We need only separate from the idea of a right all that the sinful heart has associated therewith, all that is presumptuous and self-seeking, and it will no longer have the least feature that could give offense to the most reverential mind. The Scriptures present the thought of duty as intimately connected with the idea of right; and this involves, in fact, the profoundest conception of the moral. Here, all dutiful living, on the part of man, is a right of God upon him (מִשְׁפָּט), a paying of his debt to God,—it is ὁφειλή,—and man is debtor to God and to the brethren [Rom. i, 14; viii, 12; Luke xvii, 10; comp. 1 Cor. vii, 22]; and God’s laws are an expression of the rights of God [Lev. xviii, 4, 5; xix, 37; xxv, 18; Deut. vii, 12; xxxiii, 10; Psa. xix, 10; 1, 16; cv, 45; cxix, 5 sqq.; Isa. xxvi, 9; and others]. By virtue of his moral nature, of the likeness of God that was impressed upon him, man becomes in turn a debtor,—is under obligation to bring this nature into realization, to fulfill the claim or right of God upon him; and he who fulfills this right is consequently just or righteous; “He hath showed thee, O man, what is good (the moral law); and what doth the Lord require of thee (as duty) but to do justly (the right) and to love mercy?” [Micah vi, 8; comp. Deut. x, 12, 13]. Thus, as it appears, the Scriptures present rather the objective phase of the moral, the right of God and of the divine law upon man; whereas the moralists of recent times, especially since Kant, devote their attention rather to its subjective phase, as duty.
In the manner of viewing the relations between right and duty there often prevails some confusion; right is often confounded with discretionary power, whereas, in fact, the former is more than the latter, and contains an actual requirement; or, right is regarded as the mere possibility or liberty to act. Furthermore a great difference is frequently made between right and the right, the two being taken as capable of excluding each other, so that I may have a right and yet its execution be not right. This, in so far as the question is as to moral right, is manifestly absurd. It is true, according to civil law, I may have a so-called right in the exercising of which I shall do wrong; but of such civil right we are not here speaking; in the sphere of morality I can never have a right to what is wrong, and I can never exercise a right without doing the right. I have a right only in so far as the moral law takes me under the protection of the moral order of the universe; I have a right upon another in so far as he has a moral duty to fulfill toward me; I have right conduct in so far as I myself realize the moral law; and this I do in fact when I do not throw away my own moral right, but maintain it intact. Whenever I have a moral right, then is it also right to realize it.