La démission de la morale

by Émile Faguet

"La démission de la morale" by Émile Faguet is a philosophical treatise written in the early 20th century. The work examines how moral thought moves from ancient, persuasive ethics to the Christian era’s commanding duties and, finally, to Kant’s autonomous morality of pure obligation. It asks whether modern ethics has let duty abdicate in favor of comfort, utility, or sentiment, turning morality into a mere art of living. Readers interested in ethics and intellectual history will find a rigorous, critical survey of moral foundations. The opening of the treatise states its aim: to trace the evolution of morality—especially in France—from pre-Kantian systems to the latest debates. Faguet distinguishes morality as science (normative, rule-giving) from morality as art (techniques for happiness), then surveys antiquity: Socratic and Stoic ethics as rational yet persuasive, Epicurean ethics as eudaimonistic and hypothetical, all lacking true imperative force, much like the mixed imperatives of Greek religion with its gods, Fate, and Nemesis. He shows Christianity instituting a genuinely imperative morality grounded in obedience to God, transformed by Jesus from justice to love, yet still supported by religious sanctions; later, as faith wanes, utilitarian and sentimental “independent” moralities remain merely persuasive and subjective. Turning to Kant, he presents the first fully independent, autonomous morality: the moral fact is self-evident and categorical; duty commands without conditions; freedom is affirmed by the experience of remorse; rewards or pleasure corrupt moral purity; virtue is a conquest against nature; and an enduring tension opposes individual happiness to species-level duty—so that morality becomes, from the start, a perpetual internal struggle of the self against itself.