ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the competency of practical philosophy. Ethics is "practical philosophy" in the normative sense, and the claim to declare what ought to happen is no empty presumption. For the principles of the Ought must be invented, devised. Their place of origin is the laboratory of ethical thought. The philosophical ethics does not actually assume this enormous responsibility can easily be apprehended in a vague way; but it needs a more rigid proof from the structure of ethical phenomena. There is then nothing for philosophy to do but to establish and present them clearly, to seek the inner grounds for their absoluteness and to bring these into the light. For here thought is only a reproduction of that which is pre-figured, and ethics is contemplative, not normative; it is pure theory of the practical, not itself "practical philosophy".
