The Moral Law

Abstract

What is our duty? It's to do that for which we're made. Here I don't mean an end determined by some higher power, only that we're fashioned in a certain way, disposed toward some actions and unfit for others. The same is true of us as of other things, that we should do what we're good at. So the question we have to ask is: What is man's proper employment? The answer to this question will be the moral law itself. Because that for which we're made is nothing other than our end, the moral law commands us to achieve our end. This end is the ideal terminus of the development of the human being, and it's toward this terminus that we must march. As human beings are constantly changing, we can and must work at becoming more and more what it's in our power to be, at fully realizing all the powers of our nature. To accomplish this, all we must do is attend to the direction toward which these powers naturally orient us. So the first formulation of the moral law is: “Move in the direction of your end.” But what does this end consist of? If we arrived there, our being would be actualized, would be an absolute and perfect version of what it is now in a limited, imperfect way. At present our being is essentially – but incompletely – a person.

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