The highest moral principle in the Philosophy Of Freedom is:
To let our moral substance (our moral ideas) express itself in our life is the moral principle of the human being who regards all other moral principles as subordinate. We may call this point of view Ethical Individualism. POF 9-7
What is considered here to be a "moral idea"?
- Free human beings act because they have a moral idea, they do not act in order to be moral.
- They who are incapable of producing moral ideas through intuition must receive them from others. In so far as a human being receives their moral principles from without they are actually unfree.
- It is not possible to deduce a single new moral idea from earlier ones.
- Freedom is impossible if anything other than I myself (whether a mechanical process or God) determines my moral ideas.
- Moral ideals have their root in the moral imagination of human beings.
- A human being without imagination does not create moral ideas.
- Immature youths without any moral imagination like to look upon the instincts of their half developed natures as the full substance of humanity, and reject all moral ideas which they have not themselves originated, in order that they may "live themselves out" without restriction.
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