With Goethe, Schiller, and Romanticism, our
philosopher rejects the rigoristic Kantian-Fichtean view of duty
which, in his opinion, would suppress individuality and reduce all
persons to a homogeneous mass; like them he regards the development
of unique personalities as the highest moral task. "Every man should
express humanity in his own peculiar way in a unique mixture of
elements, in order that it may reveal itself in every possible form,
and that everything may become real in the infinite fulness which
can spring from its lap." "The same duties can be performed in many
different ways. Different men may practise justice according to the
same principles, each man keeping in view the general welfare and
personal merit, but with different degrees of feeling, all the
way from extreme coldness to the warmest sympathy." The command,
therefore, is not merely: Be a person; but: Be a unique person, live
your own individual life. There is no irreconcilable conflict between
the natural law and the moral law, between impulse and reason. For the
same reasons he defends the diversity of religions and the claims of
personal religion; in each unique individual, religion should be left
free to express itself in its own unique and intimate way. His ideal
is the development of unique, novel, original personalities; and these
are expressions of the divine, which rationalism cannot bring under
either its theoretical or practical rubrics.
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