Moral Imagination 187The confusion arises because as natural scientists we
already have the facts before us and afterward investigate
them cognitively, while for ethical action we must our-
selves first create the facts that we cognize afterward. In
the evolutionary process of the ethical world order, we ac-
complish something that, on a lower level, is accom-
plished by nature: we alter something perceptible. Thus,
initially, the ethical norm cannot becognized like a natu-
ral law; rather, it must be created. Only once it is present
can it become the object of cognition.
But can we not measure the new against the old? Are
not all of us forced to measure what we produce by our
moral imagination against received ethical teachings? If
we are to be ethically productive, this is as absurd as if we
were to measure a new natural form against an old one
and say: reptiles are an unjustifiable (pathological) form
because they do not match proto-amniotes.
Thus, ethical individualism does not contradict a theo-
ry of evolution when it is properly understood, but fol-
lows directly from it. Haeckel’s genealogical tree,
running from protozoa to human beings as organic be-
ings, ought to be traceable—without interrupting natural
law or breaking the uniformity of evolution—right up to
the individual as an ethical being in a specific sense.^4
[10]
[11]
- Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel (1834–1919), German biol-
ogist and philosopher. The first German advocate of Darwin’s theory
of evolution, Haeckel formulated the famous dictum, “ontogeny reca-
pitulates phylogeny.” Haeckel was the first to draw up a genealogical
tree, relating all the various orders of animals, and proposed that all
life was a unity, originating in crystals and evolving to humanity.