The Idea of Freedom 149egoistic actions, etc. In actions based on purely ethical
intuition, it isnot the motive. Naturally, my I directs its
gaze toward the perceptual content but it does not allow
itself to bedetermined by it. The content is used only to
form acognitive concept for oneself; the corresponding
moral concept is not derived by the I from the object.
The cognitive concept of a particular situation that I en-
counter is also a moral concept only when I come from
the standpoint of a particular moral principle. If I want-
ed to base all of my actions on the moral evolution of
civilization, then I would have fixed marching orders.
From every event that I perceive and that can possibly
concern me, an ethical duty immediately arises; name-
ly, to do my part so that the event in question serves the
evolution of civilization. In addition to the concept,
which reveals to me the context of an event or thing in
natural law, the event or thing also has an ethical label
with instructions addressed to me, the moral being,
about how I should behave. Such a moral label is legit-
imate in its sphere, but on a higher level it coincides
with the idea that reveals itself to me when I face a con-
crete situation.
People vary in their capacity for intuition. For one per-
son, ideas just bubble up, while another achieves them by
much labor. The situations in which people live, and
which serve as the scene of their activity, are no less var-
ied. How I act will therefore depend on how my capacity
for intuition works in relation to a particular situation.
The sum of ideas active within us, the real content of our
intuitions, constitutes what is individual in each of us,