Ethics is the knowledge about the good of the spirit. Epistemology is the knowledge about knowledge. It is an ethical knowledge because knowledge is a good of the spirit.
The good is what must be. Something is good when it is as it must be.
Inert matter has no duty, or rather it is already what it must be.
The good of life is to persevere in its being. Health is to have fully the means to keep on living. Reproduction is the perpetuation of life. The good of life is to continue to be what it already is. The spirit does not have to prescribe what it must be.
The good of the spirit is to live well as a spirit, therefore to want well, to think well, to feel well, to act well, to perceive well and to imagine well. Ethics is the knowledge about the good of the spirit, therefore about the good life of the spirit.
A spirit is fulfilled when she lives well, when she lives as she must live.
A good will is central and fundamental, because to think well, to act well, to feel well, to perceive well and to imagine well, is to think, act, feel, perceive and imagine in accordance with a good will (Kant 1785).
A good will is to will the good
A good will is necessarily to will the good, to want to do it as much as one can.
To want the good, to perceive, imagine, think, feel and act for the good is to live for the good.
The good of the spirit is to live for the good. For a spirit, to live well is to live for the good.
The love of the good is desire, knowledge and action. To love the good is to want it, and to perceive, imagine, think, feel and act to achieve it, as far as possible. To love the good is to live for the good.
The good of the spirit is to love the good. A spirit is fulfilled by loving the good, by desire, knowledge and action.
Since a good will is good, we must want the good will to continue when we want the good. It is the circle of the perpetuation of the life of the spirit.
To live well, we have to want to live well. One cannot live well without having a good will. The spirit must want the good of the spirit, he must live for the spirit.
We can make decisions about how we make decisions. A spirit can exercise his will on his way of exercising his will. We can decide to adopt principles that determine the good we must seek. We thus decide to always decide in accordance with the principles that we have adopted. We can decide to always make our decisions by wanting the good.
That the spirit must be for the spirit has a very down-to-earth meaning: we must work to have good living conditions. If we do not make efforts, we necessarily live rather badly. If a spirit wants to enjoy life, he must give himself the means, he must work for himself and for others.
The phrase "the spirit must live for the spirit" is ambiguous. It must be understood that the spirit must live for the good of the spirit, not only for the spirit to live. Organized crime lives to continue living and it is not a good of the spirit.
An action motivated by good will is good, even if it misses its goal, because a good will is good. Conversely, an action which is not motivated by good will is not a good, even if it has beneficial consequences, because the absence of good will is an evil. Intentions are essential for evaluating actions, because a good will is the basic condition for a good life, but it does not mean that we can ignore the consequences: we have a duty to foresee the consequences of our actions, as much as is possible and adapted to the situation.
A remark on circular definitions : principles such as "matter is what interacts with matter", "a natural number is either zero or the successor of a natural number" and "the good is that the spirit lives for the good" are not at fault. They determine the meaning of fundamental concepts. Formally we translate them by axioms. Informally, we can say that they are true by definition, or that they define the fundamental concepts. Circular definitions are forbidden only for derived concepts, defined from basic concepts. But they are not forbidden for fundamental concepts, because axioms can be considered as implicit definitions of fundamental concepts.
Emotions for a good life
We need emotions to live a good life. They teach us what to look for, when they are pleasant, and what to avoid, when they are not. They make us know the ideal, the good life. They also give knowledge of reality, and even in the most important way possible, because they warn us about what can help us live well, or on the contrary what prevent us from living well. They give knowledge of reality by giving us the means to assess it.
The same decision can have many consequences, some pleasant, others not. The exercise of a good will requires an overview and a balanced appreciation of the foreseeable consequences (Aristotle, Nicomachean ethics).
Emotions enlighten us by showing us how to assess ends and means. But they can also blind us. A particular emotion only shows one aspect of the situation. If it is strong, it can prevent having a balanced overview and lead us to a biased, intolerant and unfair decision. Emotions are not opposed to reason like enemies, because they enlighten us on the means of a good life, but like particular interests which sometimes oppose the common interest.
Pleasures are indicators of a good life. But a good life is not reduced to the search for pleasures. A good will cannot be reduced to obedience to emotions because it requires a balanced appreciation of all the foreseeable consequences of our decisions. Following the pleasure of the moment is not enough to make a good will.
The good knowledge
To have a good will, one needs good knowledge. We have to know the good we want and the reality where we are. And we must know them well: perceive well, imagine well the consequences of our decisions, feel well and think well.
To think well, we must not just believe what we like, we must know good reasons to believe what we believe. We must be able to justify what we think we know with good principles, good observations and good reasoning.
We do not always have to be experts to think well, but we always need a minimum of common sense to recognize good principles and apply them correctly.
We know and respect reason when we reason correctly with good principles and good observations.
We recognize good principles by their fruits. They bear fruit when they help us to live a good life.
Reason is good for all spirits. Its fruits are universal. Good observations, good principles and good reasoning are good for everyone.
When we understand that reason is universal, we understand at the same time the great principle on which we can found all rational knowledge. Everything happens just like if reason was a generous divinity, who gives wisdom to those who really want to know it. The first truth about reason is precisely that it is generous. It is not jealous, it does not deprive us of the best. It would not be the best if it deprived any of us of the best. « It is not possible that the divinity be envious. » (Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book A, 983a) Knowing that knowledge can be shared by all, we have the fundamental knowledge which enables us to understand all rational knowledge.
Living for the good of all spirits
We cannot do the good of others against their will because we cannot make their decisions for them. Their good is that they have a good will and that they exercise it freely. Since we do not have the duty to do what we cannot do, we could conclude that we never have the duty to do the good of others, that we should only take care of our own good. Can a selfish spirit, who lives only for his own good, without worrying about the good of other spirits, live well?
We cannot do the good of others for them, but we can give them the means to do it, or on the contrary, prevent them from living a good life.
A selfish spirit renounces his social nature. He can be good for other spirits but he gives up this good. He is a withering spirit.
A spirit lives well by being good for himself and his surroundings. But he can also be good for everyone, because the fruits of reason are universal. When a spirit knows reason, he knows at the same time what is good for him and what is good for everyone else. By revealing reason, a spirit proves to himself, and to everyone else, that he can be good for all spirits, because we can all benefit from the fruits of reason.
By refusing to be good for others, a selfish spirit renounces at the same time to be really good for himself, because he deprives himself of the power of reason. We learn at the same time to be good for ourselves and to be good for others. If we do not know how to be good for others, we do not know how to be good for ourselves.
A spirit lives a good life when he lives for the good of all spirits, his own and that of all others. The good of a spirit cannot be separated from the good of all spirits.
"Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in any other person, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means" (Kant, 1785). To consider a spirit only as a means is to deliberately ignore his good. To really consider him as an end, we have to want his good.
To love a spirit is to live for his good. Reason prescribes to live for the good of all spirits, therefore to love them.
« You shall love your neighbor as yourself » (Leviticus 19, 18) is not only a religious principle, it is also a rationalist principle. If human beings do not want to help each other, reason can not be among them.
Hatred drives us mad because it is contrary to reason, which prescribes us to always want the good of all spirits. If we want to keep reason, we must "love our enemies" (Matthew 5, 44). We must forgive because hatred prevents us from wanting the good, and therefore from living a good life.
Virtue
Virtue is to be always ready to perceive well, imagine well, feel well, think well, want well and act well, or almost always. Virtues are special ways of being virtuous.
Virtue is necessary for a good life, but it is not enough. On its own, it does not cure diseases, it does not stop the hand of the torturers, it does not save from misery. To live a good life a spirit needs favorable conditions in addition to virtue: health, peace and prosperity.
Virtue is not given in advance. A spirit must learn to be what it must be. When he learns to be virtuous, a spirit is not yet what he must be, because he must learn it, but in another way he is already what he must be, because he must learn, because the learning phase must be. Learning to be virtuous is already starting to be virtuous, because wanting the good is good. The desire for wisdom is the beginning of wisdom. When we love the good, we love what is already there, not just a good that we desire without having it, because the love of the good is the good. “Whoever drinks this water will never be thirsty again because it is a source from which life springs endlessly." (John 4, 14)
Feeling well, having emotions that help us adapt to reality in accordance with a good will, is part of virtue ((Aristotle, Nicomachean ethics, Hursthouse 2001)). But the emotions are not directly under the control of the will. We do not decide to be moved. We do not choose to love. How then can we want to feel well? Reason requires us to love all spirits, but love cannot be commanded. Virtue requires emotional balance, but emotions do not obey the orders of the will.
The triggering of emotions is not directly under the control of the will, but the emotions are not all powerful against the will. One can voluntarily control the expression of emotions, retain or release them. We can also voluntarily control the conditions, external and internal, which trigger them. In particular, emotions depend on the ways of interpreting reality. We can use our thought to modify our emotional reactions by changing our interpretations. So we can exercise our good will to learn to feel well, to love and to be balanced.
Is it the dream of an enlightened?
The fulfillment of reason is like the dream of an enlightened: that all spirits find their happiness by living for the happiness of all spirits, that we are all philosophers, all in the love of reason, all virtuous, as if philosophy could be the fundamental music that makes all spirits dance and turns the planet into a paradise.
Dreams come true when they are adapted to reality, when they are within our reach, so that we can naturally find the means to achieve them. By motivating us, these dreams lead us to their realization, they reveal to us the means that enable us to accomplish them. If we had given up the dream, we would never have found the means.
We are all naturally capable of knowing what is naturally possible and how to live a good life. We are all naturally capable of learning to be virtuous and we all have an interest in learning it, because it is the good life. A world where most people are pretty virtuous most of the time, or learn to be so, is naturally possible. Thus understood, a rather fair but not perfect world, the rationalist ideal is adapted to reality.
The nature of the spirit is to dream of the ideal in order to be fulfilled as a spirit worthy of the ideal. This is how he reveals himself fully as a spirit. A spirit is naturally driven by the desire of the ideal and reveals what he really is by realizing this desire. A paradise where all spirits find happiness in the happiness of all is simply a world where all spirits are faithful to their spiritual nature. This is what we are naturally made for, what we are carried to when we want to be true spirits.