ABSTRACT
The character of the normative in ethics as a philosophical discipline is therefore justified; but, in contrast to all the exaggerated representations of its power to mould life, it suffers a considerable limitation. Ethics is normative only in so far as it brings to consciousness principles, the influence of which upon human determination, disposition and valuation of the real is first mediated through elevating them into rational consciousness. But in the way ethical apriorism itself also acquires a significance totally different from the purely theoretical. Ethical apriorism has no such thing, for reality which can be experienced does not at all need to contain the values discerned; and the values are condensed into commandments exactly there where reality—that is, the actual conduct of man—does not correspond to them. In ethics apriorism rests wholly upon itself. It is altogether autonomous; and that is exactly the questionable element in it.
